Franchised Fast Food Brands: an Empirical Study of Factors Influencing Growth
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Acta Commercii - Independent Research Journal in the Management Sciences ISSN: (Online) 1684-1999, (Print) 2413-1903 Page 1 of 8 Original Research Franchised fast food brands: An empirical study of factors influencing growth Authors: Orientation: Franchising is a popular and multifaceted business arrangement that captures a 1 Christopher A. Wingrove sizeable portion of the restaurant industry worldwide. Boris Urban1 Research purpose: The study empirically investigated the influence of various site location Affiliations: and branding factors on the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands across the greater 1Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Gauteng region. the Witwatersrand, South Africa Motivation of the study: Researching which factors influence the growth of franchised fast food restaurant brands is important for an emerging market context such as South Africa when Corresponding author: considering the marked increase in the consumption of fast foods. Boris Urban, [email protected] Design: A sample of 140 customers was surveyed from 12 leading franchised fast food outlets. Primary data were collected for various items representing site location and brand factors. Dates: Received: 01 Aug. 2016 Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Accepted: 04 Dec. 2016 Findings: The overall findings showed that convenience and central facilities of a retail Published: 31 Mar. 2017 location are positively and significantly associated with the growth of the franchise fast food How to cite this article: outlet. Wingrove, C.A. & Urban, B., 2017, ‘Franchised fast food Practical implications: The study findings have implications for practitioners who need to brands: An empirical study of take into account which factors influence revenue growth, since targeted interventions may be factors influencing growth’, required to implement sustainable strategies by franchisors. Acta Commercii 17(1), a431. https://doi.org/10.4102/ Contribution: The findings may serve as a catalyst for this growing and important activity in ac.v17i1.431 South Africa and other emerging markets. Copyright: © 2017. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Introduction Creative Commons Franchising is a popular and multifaceted business arrangement that has attracted considerable Attribution License. research attention (Combs, Michael & Castrogiovanni 2004; Michael & Combs 2008:74). Franchising is prevalent across multiple sectors, including retail, service and manufacturing, and represents a high percentage of sales in various countries and regions, such as in the UK, US, Australia, Italy and the Pacific Rim and Middle East regions (International Franchise Association 2015:2–3). Additionally, franchising is one of the key forms of global expansion and entrance into foreign markets for international businesses, with millions of franchisees worldwide (Hsu, Jang & Canter 2010:441; Shaw 2009:33). Despite the importance of franchising to the South African economy and the restaurant industry, little research has been conducted at a store level across franchised fast food restaurant brands. This is a serious oversight as franchising captures a sizeable portion of the restaurant industry worldwide and plays an important role in its growth (Hsu et al. 2010). Moreover, researching franchised fast food restaurant brands is important for an emerging market context such as South Africa, when considering the marked increase in the consumption of affordable, large-portioned and immediate fast foods (Terblanche & Boshoff 2010:2; Van Zyl, Steyn & Marais 2010:125). The study stems from a problem of increased competition from both local and international franchise brands entering the South African market, forcing fast food restaurants to take cognisance of which factors influence their growth (Strydom 2014; Van Zyl et al. 2010). Read online: Scan this QR Past studies on franchising as a topic of academic inquiry have tended to focus on the relationship code with your smart phone or between the franchisor and franchisee by investigating how the size, age, level of competition and mobile device number of franchised outlets influence the size of the total network distribution (Combs et al. to read online. 2004; Van Wyk & De Jager 2009). However, more recently, various factors, including consumer http://www.actacommercii.co.za Open Access Page 2 of 8 Original Research perceptions, have been hypothesised to influence the market leaves the fast food market open to both local and performance and profitability of franchising (Kacker et al. international players, where the key to success is primarily 2013:22; Nijmeijer, Fabbricotti & Huijsman 2013:62). For based on positioning in the market through site location and instance, research findings show that franchising relies brand performance (North & Kotze 2004:30). substantially on location and convenience in order to attract consumers to their brands, with consumers being attracted to Franchising: Underlying theory the store location as a result of the mix of the central facilities available within the retail location (North & Kotze 2004:30). Extant theory assumes that both franchisors and franchisees Fast food restaurants need to adjust to new market pressures choose franchising in order to improve performance over to ensure that a wider net is cast across its consumer base in time (Hua & Dalbor 2013:724) and consequently revenue order to capture the full range of consumers as measured growth performance is operationalised as the study through the Living Standards Measure (LSM) 1 to 10 (Van dependent variable. Traditionally, research on franchising Zyl et al. 2010). has focused on agency costs (Michael & Combs 2008:76) to ensure that the responsibility lies with the franchisor to Taking cognisance of the various factors influencing franchise maintain high quality franchisees across their network performance and noting that research emphasis needs to distribution. In this regard, business format franchising is a shift towards understanding how franchising impacts widespread form of operation (Nijmeijer et al. 2013); under organisational performance and drives growth (Combs et al. this arrangement, advertising, brand building, product- 2004:910; Hua & Templeton 2010:57; Steyn, Labadarios & Nel service mix and overall quality monitoring of the franchised 2011:105), this study fills the literature gap by empirically outlets remain the obligation of the franchisor to ensure that investigating the influence of various factors on the growth revenue growth and sustainability of both parties is of franchised fast food restaurant brands. maintained. While acknowledging the importance of such an arrangement and its derived benefits, several studies have The article starts with a brief literature review. Hypotheses further identified various factors that influence the are then developed on the basis of past research and tested performance and profitability of both the franchisor and using regression analysis. Results and discussion follow, franchisee (Kacker et al. 2013:25). Factors such as the franchise implications are highlighted and study limitations are site location, convenience, quality of the physical environment addressed with future research recommended. and service of the restaurant, including its image and perceived customer value, have all been associated with Literature overview improved performance (So et al. 2013:33). Franchising in South Africa Moreover, successful franchisors and retailers are customer centric and their strategic and tactical decisions revolve The franchising industry plays an important role in the South around their present and potential customers (Urban & African economy and contributed over R302 billion revenue Kongo 2015:2). Store choice decisions in the food retailing to the overall gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 industry have been widely discussed in the literature. A (Franchising Association South Africa [FASA] 2014:14–17). consumers’ decision to shop at a store is in general based on Within this industry, the fast food franchising sector leads by location or convenience, assortment and quality of commanding approximately 22% of the overall franchise merchandise, service quality, price image, ambience sector (Stats SA 2014:140–198). South Africa experienced a conditions and promotions as well as brand selection 160% increase (R516.3 million to R1342.9 million) in the (Jaravaza & Chitando 2013:303). income generated by the fast food industry between 2006 and 2012 (Stats SA 2014:140–190). The growth of the South African Building on in this research direction several key variables fast food industry has been attributed to factors such as rising are operationalised for the purpose of this study which have household incomes, growth in the black middle class been identified in the literature as important factors to segment, participation of women in the labour force and the franchise growth. The selection of variables is by no means increasing value of household time (Mackay et al. 2013:68; exhaustive. It is acknowledged that the actual process of Roberts-Lombard 2009:236). franchisee sales growth is far more complex and that no single factor can determine the outcome of this process. Governmental, political, social and economic change in South Notwithstanding the complexity of the phenomenon and the Africa between 2001 and 2011 has shown a drastic shift in the reciprocal nature of relationships between different factors consumer profile; the biggest