Base on the trust-commitment theory, the first four parts of the trust-commitment theory will affect the last part, which is to keep cooperate with the company or not. My participants in this case of 85°C café is not satisfied with the company on average, but the result of keep franchising is positive. The reasons of this result are complicated, not only because of the marketing plan. Marketing plan is a blasting fuse that leads to the result of today’s situation.
The widest gap between franchisor and franchisees is marketing plan of coffee day on Friday. All of my participants agree the thought of coffee day, the main purpose is to attract more customer to buy 85°C café’s coffee. However, keeping cups is not necessary, because keeping cups will affect the sale on other normal days. The company only sees the outstanding achievement on Friday, but ignored the dismal performance on other days.
Aside from abovementioned findings, the unrevealed part from the conversation is that franchisees feel the company does not care for them. “ Company should not see us as one of their employee; they should see us as a partner or symbiosis, because the success of 85°C café is originally from franchisees hard working.” Said by my participant, and I believe this can represent the thought for all the franchisees.
“If the company care about us, they would not have opened so many stores near us.” This is what my participant told me after the interview, my participant is not happy with the company that agree to open new stores around the old ones, and
without any discussion. The feeling is like a Chinese idiom saying: The wolf has a winning game when the shepherds quarrel. Open new stores in the same area will take over the market share, which means profit earned will drop from the old store, also the performance of new opened store will not be good, but only the company will earn the royalties and the purchase from franchisees’ stores.
Still, all kinds of problems is occurring, the gap between franchisor and franchisees is still there, but the only request for the franchisor is to keep the value for the franchisees, and to carry on the ambition to different territories. The purpose of this thesis is to alert franchisors that do not see the problems, the problems between franchisors and franchisees. Small problems may cause failures, franchisors must be aware of these small problems between their closest partner, which is all the franchisees.
The hope of this study is to make contributions to the franchise system, especially the relationship of franchisors and franchisees. Knowing the thought from franchisees in order to make better cooperate relationship. In spite of the findings previously mentioned, there are still some drawbacks of this study. This study applied five participants that came from the same area, which is Taoyuan City. Therefore the findings may only fit in this area. Besides, the only observed business in the study is 85°C café, the problems from other business may not be the same.
Therefore, this study suggests that more participants from all areas should be included. Through interviewing more franchisees from different areas, the findings will be more precise and more reliable.
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