The influence of entrepreneurial personality on franchisee performance: A cross-cultural analysis

Abstract

Through a survey-based study of 761 franchisees from four countries, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Spain – this research examines how a franchisee’s entrepreneurial personality traits affects the financial and relational performance of franchise units. While there is consensus that franchisee characteristics are important for successful franchise networks, there is a long-standing debate within the franchise literature as to the status, and indeed desirability, of franchisees as entrepreneurs. First, we consider how the personality traits of proactivity, innovativeness and locus of control influence the manifestation of entrepreneurial behaviours within the franchise unit, and both the direct and indirect relationships with unit performance. Second, we explore these relationships in two contexts, one associated with high entrepreneurial values (the United States and the United Kingdom) and another with low entrepreneurial values (France and Spain) to determine if the results are consistent across cultures which value entrepreneurship differently. The results suggest that franchisee performance, in terms of both financial performance and relationship quality, are indirectly enhanced by a proactive disposition, mediated by entrepreneurial behaviours. A direct positive relationship was found between locus of control and performance outcomes, but interestingly, franchisees with more innovative personalities performed less well financially. The relationships between franchisee personality, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and performance were found to be largely consistent across the two cultural groups.

Entrepreneurial marketing: Between entrepreneurial personality traits and business performance

“…A direct positive relationship is found between the locus of control personality trait with performance results. Moreover, proactivity has an indirect relationship with financial performance and the quality of relationships through entrepreneurial behaviour (Watson et al, 2020). Loveland et al (2015) state that emotional stability and extraversion are personality traits related to successful sales performance.…”

The franchisor–franchisee relationship and customer data management in the digital era

“…In addition, the law of reciprocity (Bagozzi, 1975) has taught us that giving franchisees more freedom would encourage them to show the franchisor more trust and commitment in return, and to collect better quality data since the feeling of being independent entrepreneurs would be reinforced. Thus, promoting franchisees' autonomy in the management of their stores, their customers and their data would allow them to be a source of inspiration and innovation for the network (Watson et al , 2020) and to develop local know-how. To encourage this, the franchisor could recognize successful local initiatives around the management of customer data by, for example, publicly congratulating them in various internal communications within the network.…”

The Impact of New Entrepreneurial Spirit on Cultivating Entrepreneurial Values and Entrepreneurial Ability of College Students

“…Innovative entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activities based on one or several innovations in technological innovation, product innovation, brand innovation, service innovation, business model innovation, management innovation, organizational innovation, market innovation, channel innovation, etc. Innovation is the characteristic of innovative entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is the goal of innovative entrepreneurship (Siivonen et al, 2019;Watson et al, 2020). In the concept of innovative entrepreneurship, innovation is the foundation and premise of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship is the embodiment and extension of innovation.…”