Franchise management: a model of service‐quality interactions

The main research question addressed in this paper is how two independent retail outlets in a franchise chain would react to each other on the quality of services. To better explain the interaction, the franchise as an organizational form and its peculiar characteristics compared to the integrated firm on the one hand and market transactions on the other hand are initially discussed. The paper then proposes a theoretical model of the “free‐riding phenomenon” related to the quality of services in the franchise chain, and interactions on the quality of services between the independent outlets in different environments. As spill‐over exists, two franchisees start to react to each other's quality of services and they increase the quality as the positive spill‐over effect becomes significant. The equilibrium with spill‐over gets close to that without spill‐over, as the spill‐over effect approaches zero.