Abstract

Purpose - Recently, the food service franchise market is experiencing rapid growth and competition is intensifying. Therefore, consumer choice has expanded, and reputation management has become important as a strategy for survival of corporations. Based on previous studies, this research proposed the theoretical framework about the structural relationships among reputation, trust(cognitive trust, affective trust), and loyalty. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examined the structural relationship between reputation, trust, and loyalty from the customer's perspective. Based on comprehensive validation procedures across nine food service Franchise firm types, This study found support for a five-dimensional scale with the following dimensions: Customer Orientation, Employer Brand, Reliable and Financially Strong Company, Product and Service Quality, and Social and Environmental Responsibility. In order to verify the research purposes, research model and hypotheses were developed. The data were collected from 227 food service franchise consumers through online survey. The data was analyzed with SPSS 24.0 and Amos 23.0 statistical program. Result - The results of the study are as follows. First, customer orientation, reliable·financially strong company and product·service quality have significant impact on corporate cognitive trust. And employer brand, product/service quality and social·environmental responsibility have significant impact on corporate affective trust. Second, cognitive trust and affective trust have significant impacts on consumer loyalty. Conclusions - The implications of this study are following as: From the theoretical perspective, this study considers trust as two dimensions such as cognitive and affective, not a single dimension, and identify what dimensions of franchise firms affect consumers' reputation perception and in turn lead cognitive and affective trust, and loyalty. This study also provides several managerial implications. In the franchise market where competition is intensifying, it is very important to analyze the attitudes of consumers in order to gain an advantage in competition with other competitors. In this study, it is meaningful that the study was conducted on consumers who have experience using a restaurant franchise company. Also, reputation is necessary to pay attention to the company because it is an important variable that strengthens with customer through confidence in food service franchise business, and leads loyalty and consumer consumption. Therefore, marketers should develop marketing strategies considering various reputation factors.