Abstract

Purpose - In align with the increasing competition in both online and offline franchise markets caused by the increasing impact of social networking service, entrepreneurial passion(EP) of the franchise owners has crucial impact on the stakeholders. This study proposed the customer among stakeholders has the critical influence firm's success and examined the structural relationship between entrepreneurial passion(EP) and trust, identification, and loyalty from the customer's perspective. Research design, data, and methodology - This study examines the structural relationship between entrepreneurial passion(EP), trust, identification, and loyalty from the customer's perspective. More specifically, the EP were measured using three sub-dimensions such as EP-inventing(Perceived passion for inventing), EP-founding(Perceived passion for foundting), and EP-developing(Perceived passion for developing). In order to verify the research purposes, research model and hypotheses were developed. All constructs were measured with multiple items developed and tested in the previous studies. Each item was measured on a 7 point Likert-scale anchored by '1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree'. The data were collected from 449 franchise consumers through online survey and were analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and Smart PLS 3.0. statistical program. Result - The results of this study are as follows. First, EP-inventing and EP-developing have significant impacts on corporate trust. Second, EP-founding does not have significant impact on corporate trust. Third, EP-inventing and EP-founding have significant impacts on consumer identification. Fourth, EP-developing does not have impact on identification directly, but does indirectly through corporate trust as a mediator. Fifth, corporate trust and identification have significant impacts on loyalty. Conclusions - This indicates that the foodservice franchise CEOs should continuously develop new menus and service to fulfill customer needs. EP-inventing of the food franchise CEOs may enhance customer trust for higher quality of product or service, and EP-developing can also be a driving force for customer trust as it embeds belief in customers that the franchise is sustainably developing. Also, food franchise CEOs should first clarify the support process for the existing brands before developing new ones. Customers tend to lead the trend by using brands that satisfy new trends in the foodservice franchise market, and it could have identification with the trend-setting franchise. Customers do not accept if a company is different from their personal image or norms. So the franchise CEOs must create identification with customers by building corporate trust. Corporate trust influences consumer behavior and emotion, thus the franchises need to secure trust by improving product or service continuously.