Determinants of Opportunism between Franchisor and Franchisee: Focusing on the Moderating Effect of Startup Experience

Purpose: This study examines the opportunism moderating effect by the startup experience in the relationship between franchisor and franchisees. In the case of a franchise system that has a continuous relational exchange transaction, relationship management is a very important activity because the relationship management between franchisor and franchisees improves the quality of the relationship. Nevertheless, there is insufficient of research on opportunism, which is a negative factor in managing the relationship between franchisor and franchisees in continuous relationship. Research design, data and methodology: This study, we explore the cause of opportunism based on transaction cost theory through prior research and establish a research model based by goal incongruity, uncertainty, information asymmetry, transaction specific assets, the relevance to determinant of opportunism and the startup experienced which is a moderating variable. To verify several hypotheses, the data were collected from 300 out of 1,760 domestic franchisees and analyzed using multiple regression analysis with SPSS program. Results: The findings are as follows. Goal incongruity did not affect opportunism. Opportunism increased as uncertainty increased, and as information asymmetry increased, opportunism increased. An opportunism decreased as transaction specific assets increased. Moreover, the findings show that startup experience only plays a moderating role in the relationship between information asymmetry and opportunism. Therefore, 4 out of 8 hypotheses were supported. Conclusions: The findings show that uncertainty, information asymmetry, and transaction specific assets are the determinants of opportunism. In addition, the results of the analysis of the moderating role of startup experience show that the less entrepreneurial experience, the greater the influence of information asymmetry on opportunism. Our findings mean that maintaining a successful relationship between franchisors and franchisees is possible when franchisors provide knowledge sharing, goal sharing, environmental sharing, and management information sharing to franchisees. In addition, the findings of this study shows that the contract content and management should be changed according to the entrepreneurial experience. In other words, the franchisors must share and integrate the accumulated franchisees’ and franchisors’ experience with the franchisees to create a synergy that can lead to successful bilateral relationship maintenance, which in turn reduces opportunism.