Antecedents and Performance Outcomes of Relationship Quality: The Case of Franchising

Abstract

The issue of establishing and maintaining healthy relationships with franchisees is one of the core challenges franchisors constantly have to resolve. Due to the inherent principal-agent relationship between franchisor and franchisee and the different goals of franchisors and franchisees, literature suggests addressing governance issues by means of relational mediators such as trust and satisfaction. Respectively, it has been shown that relational mediators are positively related to performance outcomes and can help to prevent litigation and conflict in the channel. Therefore, it is suggested that relationship quality, a construct that is currently gaining considerable attention within relationship marketing literature, is of particular importance especially in franchising.