Master Thesis
MSc BA Small Business & Entrepreneurship
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics & Business
Duisenberg Building, Nettelbosje 2
9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands
Abstract
This current study aims to contribute to the academic literature on antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions among franchisees. This concerns the intention for the franchisee to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour, this behaviour can be defined as renewal activities within an organisation. These renewal activities can occur in different domains, namely add new suppliers, improve organizational methods, target new customer groups and offer new goods and services. It is valuable to gain understanding of the intention of franchisees, since the franchisee is accountable for the success or failure of the business. This current study uses the Theory of Planned Behaviour in order to research the antecedents of the intention to be entrepreneurial. The antecedents include attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Past entrepreneurial behaviour is added as an additional antecedent. Furthermore, three dimensions of performance (sales, profit and non-financial) are introduced as moderating variables to the relationship between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the intention to be entrepreneurial. In order to gather the needed data, this current study used a questionnaire among 25 franchisees in one franchise system. The results show that subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and past entrepreneurial behaviour are significantly related to the intention to be entrepreneurial. The only relation that is found insignificant is the relation between the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour and the intention to be entrepreneurial. Furthermore, it is found very likely that franchisees that engaged in entrepreneurial activities in the past will repeat those activities in the future. Moreover, the intention to be entrepreneurial increases even more in a situation wherein the franchisee was not entrepreneurial and had poor profits in the past. This current study provides several implications for academic and managerial use.
TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Introduction 4
2. Review of literature and hypothesis 6
2.1 Franchising 6
2.2 Franchisee’s entrepreneurial behaviour 7
2.3 Franchisee’s entrepreneurial intention 7
2.4 the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour among franchisees 8
3. Method 12
3.1 Sample and data collection 12
3.2 Measurements 13 3.2.1 Independent variables 14 3.2.2 Dependent variables 17 3.2.3 Control variables 17 3.3 Data analysis 19 4. Results 21
5. Discussion, conclusions and implication 26
5.1 Discussion 26
5.2 Conclusions 29
5.3 Implications 30
6. Limitations and future research 31
References 32
Appendix 37
Appendix A: The different Theory of Planned Behaviour studies 37
Appendix B: Early and late respondents 38
Appendix C: High-low entrepreneurial scores 39
Appendix D: Simple linear regression for each reference group 40
Appendix E: Regression analysis (sales) 42
1. INTRODUCTION
An important challenge in the entrepreneurship literature is gaining understanding why some entrepreneurs act in a different way than other entrepreneurs do, something that the literature describes as entrepreneurial behaviour. This entrepreneurial behaviour is “the fundamental behaviour of firms by which they move into new markets, seize new customers and/or combine (existing) resources in new ways” (Ireland, Hitt, Camp & Sexton, 2001, p. 50). The differences in behaviour are shaped by several personal factors, which are called antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour. Several researchers state that studying entrepreneurial behaviour is highly valuable and important (Frese, 2007; Kirzner, 1973; Schumpeter, 1934). This importance is endorsed by Frese (2007), who stated that “actions by the entrepreneur make a difference for whether or not an organization sees the light of day and/or whether an entrepreneurial unit becomes successful” (p. 152). In order to understand, explain and adjust the behaviour of different entrepreneurs, it is important to know how these differences come to existence. Therefore this study will focus on the antecedents that lead to the intention to be entrepreneurial.
Also, Clarkin & Rosa (2005) state that, despite the given restrictions and rules in a franchise system, the franchisees have opportunities to act in an entrepreneurial way by being creative around those restrictions and rules. This and other research create room for a whole new perspective in the franchising literature, in which the role of the franchisee can be of far more importance. Therefore, it is important to get a better understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour in the franchise context, since the franchisor is depending on this behaviour for the success of the franchise (Michael & Combs, 2008; Dada, Watson & Kirby, 2012).
Despite the fact that entrepreneurial behaviour has recently attracted more attention in the franchising literature (Croonen et al., 2016), researchers do not fully understand why some entrepreneurs have a higher intention to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour than others. The factors that cause these differences in behaviour are named in several papers the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour. Many researchers have used the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to get an understanding of these antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour, since entrepreneurship is seen as a form of behaviour for which intention-models are perfectly suited (Bird, 1988; Krueger & Carsrud, 1993; Kolvereid, 1996). According to Krueger Reilly & Carsrud (2000), much of what we consider to do in an entrepreneurial way is intentionally planned behaviour.
entrepreneurial into consideration. Conclusively, there exists a gap in the TPB literature, since this TBP model with the antecedents and intentions to entrepreneurial behaviour is never empirically tested in a franchising context before. This gap in the literature will be addressed in this study. Therefore the following research question represents the core of this research: What is the effect of different antecedents on the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees?
The TPB will be the basis of this study in order to explain differences in intention among franchisees. The TPB offers a coherent, highly generalizable and abstract theoretical framework to create an understanding of what causes differences in the intention to be entrepreneurial (Krueger et al., 2000). This research will extend the original TPB model by adding past entrepreneurial behaviour as antecedent and investigate if there is a relationship between this past behaviour and intention among franchisees.
The outcome of this study provides some important managerial implications. Franchisors can use this knowledge in their selection process for potential new franchisees. When the franchisor knows what combination of antecedents shape the desired behaviour of different franchisees, the franchisor can select the new franchisees based on these antecedents. Next to that, Croonen et al. (2016) state that: “there is a lack of integrative empirical knowledge on antecedents of franchisee entrepreneurial behaviour” (p. 3). This study answers this call for empirical knowledge by providing new insights on franchisee entrepreneurial behaviour for both the entrepreneurial and franchising literature streams.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES 2.1 Franchising
Mason, 2007; Pizanti & Lerner, 2003). In those dynamic local markets, it is essential to engage in local adaptation and anticipate on the changing demand of the customers (Kaufmann & Eroglu, 1999). Franchisees are close to the local market, and therefore have a lot of knowledge about local demand (Combs, Ketchen & Hoover, 2004). So, compared to the franchisor, the franchisees have more knowledge about the needs of the local market.
2.2 Franchisee’s entrepreneurial behaviour
Many researchers agree with each other that franchisees can engage in entrepreneurial behaviour. The Filet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonald’s is a typical example of a product resulting from a franchisee acting in an entrepreneurial way to introduce a new product to satisfy the local population (Gillis & Combs, 2009). Despite the fact that franchisees can behave in an entrepreneurial way, only a few studies have measured entrepreneurial behaviour among franchisees (i.e. Croonen, et al., 2016; Dada et al., 2012). Sharma & Chrisman (1999) state that entrepreneurial behaviour encompasses actions for new venture creation. In contrast, they also state that renewal or innovative activities can only take place in existing businesses. The concepts of innovation and renewal are often used as synonyms. However, those concepts are quite different. According to Sharma and Chrisman (1999), innovation is an element of renewal. They argue that; “renewal activities reside within an existing organization and are not treated as new businesses by the organization” (Sharma & Chrisman, 1999, p.19). On the other hand, “innovation refers to renewal activities that are not only new to the organization but also new to the industry” (Croonen et al., 2016, p 2). In this current study, entrepreneurial franchisee behaviour is defined as renewal activities. According to Kuratko and Audretsch (2013) and Shane and Venkataraman (2000), entrepreneurial behaviour among franchisees can take place in several domains. This study follows the suggestion that there are four domains in which entrepreneurial opportunities can be found within a franchise system. The four domains, in which franchisees can proactively initiate renewal activities are: “offering new goods and services, adding new suppliers, improving organizing methods, and targeting new markets in the form of new customer groups” (Croonen et al., 2016, p. 5).
2.3 Franchisee’s entrepreneurial intention
Taking the entrepreneurship domain into consideration, intention models assume that entrepreneurial behaviour is planned. Since this behaviour seems to be planned, many models (e.g. Entrepreneurial Event Model, the Entrepreneurial Attitude Orientation) have tried to predict this entrepreneurial behaviour (Guerrero, Rialp, & Urbano, 2008). However, the TPB is the only model that is proven to be general and robust (Meeks, 2009). Therefore, this study will use the TBP model as framework.
The foundation of this TPB model comes from Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), who developed the theory of reasoned action to understand the behaviour of individuals. Ajzen (1991) elaborated on this theory by developing the TPB. Nowadays, many researchers use the TPB of Ajzen (1991) to understand the behaviour of individuals. The theory explains that the intentions of an individual are the most powerful factors in explaining a given behaviour (Bagozzi, Baumgartner & Yi, 1989). The intention indicates the willingness of an individual to pursue certain behaviour and shows how much effort the individual is willing to put in executing the behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).
Three antecedents can predict the intention in TPB. These three antecedents are: attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control (PBC). The first antecedent is an individual’s attitude toward a certain behaviour. It refers to the question if an individual is aware of the existence of a certain type of behaviour (in this case entrepreneurial behaviour), and the question if the individual evaluates this behaviour as favourable or unfavourable for him or her (Ajzen, 1991). The second antecedent is subjective norms, which describes the judgement of friends, family and colleagues on the outcomes of the behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). The third antecedent is PBC, it refers to the individual beliefs if he or she is able to execute a specific behaviour and to what extent this behaviour is controllable by him- or herself (Ajzen, 1991). In other words, does the individual expect that he or she has the capabilities and resources to do a specific job or task.
2.4 The antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour among franchisees Attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour
H1: A positive attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour positively affects the franchisee’s intention to be entrepreneurial.
Subjective norms
Subjective norms relates to social pressure to perform certain behaviour. In other words, it is a function of normative beliefs toward entrepreneurial behaviour, represented by the opinions of important stakeholders (Leroy et al., 2015). However, the magnitude of this pressure can depend on the characteristics of these stakeholders. According to Krueger (2000), strong ties like family and friends are not appropriate as important stakeholder bases for an entrepreneur. He suggests that colleagues and participants of the management team are a more important stakeholder basis for an entrepreneur than the stakeholder group family and friends. However, most of the studies do not exclude family and friends from their research because these researchers do believe, in contrast with Krueger (2000), that these stakeholders are in fact important for the entrepreneurs. This study uses both stakeholder groups in order to get a better understanding of which stakeholders are most important for the entrepreneur (franchisee).
Due to insignificant previous results, some researchers questioned the subjective norms as an antecedent. Those researchers suggest that subjective norms are a weak predictor for intentions (i.e. Armitage & Conner, 2001; Godin & Kok, 1996; Sheppard, Hartwick & Warshaw, 1988). However, Trafimow and Finlay (1996) suggest that this unimportance of subjective norms is unlikely. Those researchers conducted a study across 30 different behaviours and found evidence what suggests that some behaviour was driven by attitude and some behaviour was driven by subjective norms. In addition, Meek, Pacheco and York (2010) came with a similar statement, suggesting that subjective norms are an important motivation for entrepreneurs to behave entrepreneurially. So, it is expected, when using a proper measurement method, that subjective norms are positively related to the intention to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour.
H2: Subjective norms positively affect the franchisee’s intention to be entrepreneurial.
Perceived behavioural control
Attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour Subjective norms Perceived behavioural control Intention to be entrepreneurial Entrepreneurial behaviour
his or her ability to execute a task (Ajzen, 1991). Several authors found that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is positively related to renewal, creating new products/services and adapting to the local environment (e.g. Chen, Greene & Crick, 1998; Zhao, Hills & Seibert, 2005). As such, franchisees that have more confidence to overcome potential constraints in the process of entrepreneurial behaviour will have more intention to be entrepreneurial than others who lack this confidence. Thus, PBC will be positively related to the intention to be entrepreneurial.
H3: Perceived behavioural control positively affects the franchisee’s intention to beentrepreneurial.
Figure 1: The basic TPB model Past entrepreneurial behaviour
annually or a few times a year, e.g. blood donation). In addition to the research of Ouellette and Wood (1998), several other researchers argue that past behaviour predicts intentions (e.g. Bamberg, Ajzen, & Schmidt, 2003; Aarts & Dijkesterhuis, 2000; Aarts, Verplanken & Knippenberg, 1998).
H4: Past entrepreneurial behaviour positively affects the franchisee’s intention to be entrepreneurial.
The above-hypothesised relation suggests that any form of past entrepreneurial behaviour leads to a higher intention to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour again, using the same process as before. Ouellette and Wood (1998) agree with this reasoning, but take this reasoning a step further. They state that the strength of this relation can be affected by the performance outcomes that resulted from past entrepreneurial behaviour. When the outcomes were assessed by the individual as positive, it strengthens the relation between past behaviour and the intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities again. However, when an individual has experienced less positive performance outcomes in the past, the mentioned relation will be weakened; in this case, past entrepreneurial behaviour will become less relevant in predicting future entrepreneurial behaviour compared to the other antecedents (Ouellette & Wood, 1998). Although this reasoning seems logical, it has never been empirically tested in a franchising context before. Next to that, there is no research present that determines which performance indicators are most important to franchisees and therefore contribute to this moderating role the most. Therefore, this research will take past performance as moderating variable. Past performance will be measured in two steps. First, the franchisees are asked how important they assess the different past performance dimensions. Second, asked is how satisfied the franchisees are with their performance results for the dimensions. As suggested by multiple studies (Venkatraman & Ramanujam, 1986), this current study uses the performance dimensions sales, profit and non-financial performance. These three dimensions are used as separate moderators. This makes it possible to see which performance indicators impact the strength and/or magnitude of the relation between past behaviour and intentions. Therefore, this study proposes the following three moderating effects:
H5a: Past performance (sales) strengthens the mechanism between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the franchisee’s intention to be entrepreneurial.
Attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour Subjective norms Perceived behavioural control Intention to be entrepreneurial Past entrepreneurial behaviour Past performance • Sales • Profit • Non-financial Entrepreneurial behaviour
H5c: Past performance (non-financial) strengthens the mechanism between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the franchisee’s intention to be entrepreneurial.
Past entrepreneurial behaviour and past performance will both be an extension of the original model of the TPB. Therefore, a new conceptual model is introduced. This model will be named ‘the extended TPB model’, which is presented in figure 2.
Figure 2: Extended TPB model
3. METHOD 3.1 Sample and data collection
A web-based questionnaire is used to collect the data from the franchisees within the franchise system. The franchisees received an email with a link to the questionnaire. Thereafter, a reminder was sent to the franchisees who did not response within the first week. Furthermore, a telephone call is made to the business units that did not respond after the reminder, with the purpose to indicate the importance of this questionnaire. The questionnaire is sent to 53 franchisees, owning together 74 business units in the Netherlands and Belgium. Some franchisees owned two or three business units (28% of the respondents in total). If a franchisee owns more than one business unit, he or she was asked to fill in the questionnaire for the business unit, which is considered as most important for the franchisee.
After the above-mentioned efforts, the questionnaire had a total of 28 respondents (response rate: 47%). However, three of the responses were excluded because one was filled in without care and two of them were incomplete. So, 25 complete responses where used for the current analysis. Although a response rate of 47% is quite high, an additional check is made to exclude all possibilities for a nonresponse bias to occur. Oppenheim (1966) and Sciulli (1998) argue that comparing the early and late respondents could track possible nonresponse biases. A T-test was not suitable for testing the differences between the two groups because the sample size has to be bigger than 60 (Vocht, 2012). Therefore, a Mann-Whitney test is used in order to compare the early and late respondents, which is suitable in case of a small sample size (Brierley, 2011). The franchisees that did respond within one week were categorized in the early group (N=19). After one week, a reminder was send to the franchisees. The franchisees that responded after the reminder were categorized as the late respondents (N=6). The results show that there are no significant differences between the collected data from the early and late respondents (see appendix B). Therefore, the nonresponse bias is not a problem in this study.
3.2 Measurements
variables with less than three items (Elsinga, Grotenhuis & Peizer, 2013). All the measurements have their origin in established literature that already tested the measures in terms of validity. A factor analysis was not conducted in this current study due to the limited sample size (cf. Flett et al., 2012; Madsen, Miller & John, 2005).
3.2.1 Independent variables
The independent variables in this current study are past entrepreneurial behaviour, attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour, subjective norms and PBC. Furthermore, past business unit performance is the moderating variable in this study, which is contains the three different dimensions sales, profit and non-financial performance.
Past entrepreneurial behaviour captures whether and how the respondents have engaged in
entrepreneurial behaviour in the past. Shane and Venkataraman (2000) stated that there are four domains of entrepreneurial behaviour, namely: offering new goods and services, adding new suppliers, improving organizing methods, and targeting new markets in the form of new customer groups. Croonen et al. (2016) used those domains in their research to measure entrepreneurial behaviour among franchisees. The current research also used these domains. The studies of Hornsby, Kuratko, Shepherd and Bott (2009) and Kuratko and Audretsch (2013) used questions like: “to what extent are you involved in entrepreneurial behaviour?”. The present study followed this approach by using questions about the extent to which the four domains are applicable to the situation of the franchisees. The questions were modified to fit the fitness branch. This resulted in the modification of the domain “offering new goods and services” into “introduce new fitness lessons to customers”. The same counts for the domain of adding new suppliers, which was modified as: adding new fitness equipment. The two other domains, improve organization methods and target new customer groups, stayed the same as the original ones. Each question was measured on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “never” to “very frequently”. The reliability analysis indicated that exclusion of a question would not lead to a sufficient Cronbach’s alpha (from 0.55 to 0.58). Although the Cronbach’s alpha was below the cut-off point, this measure was used in the further analyses of this research. This is justifiable, since this construct was based on the measurements of Croonen et al. (2016), who stated that this measure is highly applicable with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.71. An average score of this measure was calculated in order to obtain a sum variable for the overall past entrepreneurial behaviour.
Attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour is one of the independent variables. The questions
entrepreneurial behaviour, modified to fit this specific situation. To give an example, the respondents were asked to indicate to what extent they assessed that being entrepreneurial is easy or valuable. Six questions on a five-point Likert scale were used for this measurement, ranging from ”strongly disagree” to ”strongly agree”. The Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to check for the reliability of the different items concerning the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour. The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.84, which means that this scale is highly reliable. Calculating the average of the six items makes a sum variable for attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour.
A subjective norm is another independent variable. As discussed in the previous chapter, a
multi-item subjective norms measure was suitable to predict intentions instead of a single-item measure (Armitage & Conner, 2001). Kolvereid (1996) used two sets of measures to capture subjective norms, namely the belief and the motivation-to-comply. This research used three items for the first measure of Kolvereid (1996), which measured the belief of the franchisees whether different reference groups think that he or she should be acting in an entrepreneurial way. The three types of reference groups are: fellow-entrepreneurs outside the franchise system, fellow-entrepreneurs within the franchise system and family and friends. Those three reference groups were used in almost all TPB studies (e.g. Ajzen, 1991; Cheng & Chu, 2014; Kautonen, Van Gelderen & Tornikoski, 2013; Kibler, 2013; Kolvereid, 1996; Leroy et al., 2015). Questions were asked about to what extent the franchisee beliefs that ‘the different reference groups’ have the opinion that the franchisee should act in an entrepreneurial way.
The second measure, which is used to capture the motivation-to-comply, contains questions about how important the different reference groups are for the franchisee and to what extent the opinion of the different groups impact the behaviour of the franchisee. Both beliefs and the motivation-to-comply were measured on a five-point Likert scale. The items concerning beliefs were re-coded into a bi-polar scale (1= -2 to 5= +2) like Kolvereid and Isaksen (2006) did in their study. Consequently, the corresponding values about the reference groups concerning the belief and the motivation-to-comply are multiplied with each other. Next, the values are added up, and the scores averaged to get the final score for subjective norms (Kautonen et al, 2013). This led to an end score for the variable subjective norms with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.80. A high score on this measure means that opinions of others matter to the franchisee and that the franchisee has subjective norms to act in an entrepreneurial way.
Perceived behavioural control is an independent variable in the present study. A combination
This combination is made because not all the questions from these two studies are suitable for this specific franchise context. For example: ‘I know how to improve my fitness club’ or ‘I have the time to be entrepreneurial’ are questions, which were used in the questionnaire to measure PBC. For this current study, the measure contains five items rated on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “totally disagree” to ”totally agree”. The Cronbach’s alpha is calculated to check the reliability. One question of the five questions is deleted, since this method raised the Cronbach’s alpha from 0.64 to 0.67. Since this research used established measurements with a high reliability (Cheng & Chu, 2014, 𝛼: 0.79 and Kautonen et al., 2013, 𝛼: 0.82) the measurements are used in the current study.
Past performance is the moderating variable that will strengthen the relation between past
entrepreneurial behaviour and the intention to be entrepreneurial. In order to capture performance, the weighted satisfaction with performance index (WSPI) was used. This method is used in several papers (i.e. Covin, Slevin & Covin, 1990) and is designed to capture the performance of business units of organizations, like a franchise system (Chandler & Hanks, 1993). Furthermore, Chandler and Hanks (1993) stated that this method has a good internal consistency and reliability. Only subjective data was collected, since the franchisees were unable or unwilling to give objective performance data. However, Venkataraman and Ramanjam (1987) state that there is enough empirical support for using only subjective data for proper reliability and validity measures.
Following Kollmann and Stöckmann (2014), the three dimensions of performance (sales, profit and non-financial) are divided in sub-dimensions. Firstly, the dimension sales has sales and sales-growth as sub-dimensions. Secondly, the dimension profit has the sub-dimensions profit and profit-growth. Lastly, the dimension non-financial performance has as sub-dimensions customer satisfaction, customer retention and the attraction of customers (Katsikeas, Samiee & Theodosiou, 2006; Schmid & Kotulla, 2011).
weighted importance scores and transformed to a value between 0 and 1. This method, as used by Chandler and Hanks (1993), results in an end score that is named the weighted satisfaction with performance index. The reliability of the non-financial variable is checked with the Cronbach’s alpha. The reliabilities of profit and sales are checked with the Spearman-Brown test, since these constructs have less than three items. Although only one item had a reliability score below the 0.70, all the items are used in this current study, since several studies state that the reliability of this measurement is high (i.e. Chandler and Hanks, 1993; Kollmann and Stöckmann, 2014)
3.2.2 Dependent variable
The intention to be entrepreneurial is the dependent variable in the current study. It captures whether a franchisee has intentions to act in an entrepreneurial way. Studies of Cheng and Chu (2014), Kautonen et al. (2015) and Liñán and Chen (2009) did also research into the intentions to be entrepreneurial. All these studies used questions like: “I intend to… in the next 12 months” or “I have some ideas regarding …” to capture the intentions. This study follows this approach and used the four domains of entrepreneurial behaviour. The questions are modified to fit this specific situation and are, like the questions about ‘entrepreneurial behaviour’, translated to a franchise context. This measurement rated on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from “totally disagree” to “totally agree”. Reliability has been analysed by calculating the Cronbach’s alpha. For “intention to be entrepreneurial” the Cronbach’s alpha is 0.65. This measure does not reach the cut-off point. However, many researchers used that measurement to collect the data regarding the intention. Those researchers stated that the reliability is high for this measure (cf. Cheng & Chu, 2014, 𝛼: 0.91 and Kautonen et al., 2015, 𝛼: 0.94). Thus, despite that the Cronbach’s alpha is lower than 0.70, this measure will be used in this study.
3.2.3 Control variables
Table 1: Questionaire
Construct Sample items Reliability
Past
entrepreneurial behaviour
Agreement with the following four statements (five-point Likert scale, 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) (cf. Croonen et al., 2016; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000): I often…: 1) introduce new fitness lessons to customers
2) improve organization methods 3) add new fitness equipment 4) target new customer groups
𝛼 = 0.71
Performance Importance that the franchisees attach to the following performance goals (five-point Likert scale, 1=not satisfied at all to 5-highly satisfied), (cf. Chandler & Hanks, 1993; Kollmann & Stöckmann, 2014):
Sales: 1) Sales
2) Annual growth of sales Profit: 3) Profit
4) Annual growth of profit Non-financial: 5) Customer satisfaction 6) Customer attraction 7) Customer retention
Satisfaction of the franchisees with the following performance goals (five-point Likert scale, 1=Strongly disagree to 5-Strongly agree), (cf. Chandler & Hanks, 1993; Kollmann & Stöckmann, 2014):
Sales: 1) Sales
2) Annual growth of sales Profit: 3) Profit
4) Annual growth of profit Non-financial: 5) Customer satisfaction 6) Customer attraction 7) Customer retention SB = 0.62 SB = 0.86 𝛼 = 0.71 SB = 0.89 SB = 0.99 𝛼 = 0.84 Intentions to be entrepreneurial
Agreement with the following four statements (five-point Likert scale, 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) (cf. Cheng & Chu, 2014; Kautonen et al., 2015; Liñán & Chen, 2009). I have plans to…:
1) increase the variety of fitness lessons over the next three months. I have the resources to do this.
2) make the organization work more efficiently in the next three months. I have already ideas as to how I can achieve this.
3) add new fitness equipment’s in the next three months.
4) increase the number of customers. I have already ideas how I can achieve this.
𝛼 = 0.94
Attitude towards entrepreneurial behaviour
Agreement with the following six statements (five-point Likert scale, 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) (cf. Carr and Sequeira, 2007; Cheng & Chu, 2014; Liñán & Chen 2009). Being entrepreneurial…:
1) is easy 2) is valuable 3) is pleasant
4) will result in better business performance 5) is challenging
6) gives energy
Subjective norms - Belief
- Motivation-to-comply
Agreement with the following three statements (five-point Likert scale, 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) (cf. Ajzen, 1991; Cheng & Chu, 2014; Kautonen et al., 2013; Kibler, 2013; Kolvereid, 1996; Leroy et al., 2015). I believe that…:
1) fellow-entrepreneurs from the local market (outside the franchise) think that I should act in an entrepreneurial way.
2) fellow-entrepreneurs from the franchise think that I should act in an entrepreneurial way. 3) family & friends think that I should act in an entrepreneurial way.
Asking the question: how much do the opinions of others matter to you if you strive to be entrepreneurial? (five-point Likert scale, 1=not important at all to 5=strongly important) (cf. Kautonen et al., 2013):
1) fellow-entrepreneurs from the local market (outside the franchise) 2) fellow-entrepreneurs from the franchise
3) family & friends
𝛼 = 0.80
Perceived behavioural control
Agreement with the following five statements (five-point Likert scale, 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) (cf. Cheng & Chu, 2014; Kautonen et al., 2013):
1) I know how I can improve the fitness club 2) I have time to be entrepreneurial 3) I know how to be entrepreneurial 4) I have experience in entrepreneurship
5) If I do something, I always succeed in making this a success
𝛼 = 0.82 Control variables - Age of the franchise - Working hours - Education - Experience - Multi-unit ownership
Number of years the franchisee owns a the franchise (Log)
Hours work each week (Log)
The highest education
Number of years active in the industry (Log) The number of owned business units
-
𝛼 = Cronbach’s alpha
SB = Spearman-Brown coefficient
3.3 Data analysis
effect of past performance on the relation between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the intentions to be entrepreneurial (hypothesis 5a, 5b and 5c). Before the moderations were checked, the variables were standardized (z-scores).
The data was checked on possible common method biases. A common method bias implies that the founded relationship in the data may not be explained by the construct themselves but by the method of measurement (Podsakoff, Mackenzie & Lee, 2003). Since all the questions were included in only one questionnaire and measured within just one group, it was necessary to check on possible common method biases. In addition, it is arguable that the franchisees feel a certain pressure from the franchisor to perform. So, it is therefore possible that the franchisees have filed in the answers of the questionnaire more positively, a phenomenon that is called a social desirability bias. In order to prevent the existence of these common method biases, the design of the study followed the guidelines of Podsakoff et al. (2003). By doing so, this research used a wide range of variation of questions, anonymity was guaranteed and unfamiliar words, vague concepts and double-barrelled questions were avoided (Tourangeau, Rips & Rasinski, 2000). Despite that the design of this study minimized the chance of existence of common method biases, many researchers use in addition statistical remedy to control and minimize the common method bias. This current study used one of the mostly widely used techniques to address the issue of common method variance (part of common method biases), namely the Harman’s single-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003). This test is used to assess if “only a single factor emerges from the unrotated factor solution or if the first factor account for the majority of the variance” (Malhotra, Schaller & Patil, 2017, p. 203). The results show that the first factor explains 32% of the variance, where the variance explained by all the variables is 74%. Since the explained variance by the first factor is not the majority of the variance explained, there is no evidence for a common method bias in the data.
4. RESULTS
The descriptive statistics in table 2 show that the franchisees indeed have engaged in entrepreneurial behaviour in the past, since the composite measure of past entrepreneurial behaviour has a mean of 3.49 on a 1 to 5 scale. The lowest domain of entrepreneurial behaviour scores a mean of 3.32 (offering new goods and services) and the highest domain scores 3.64 (adding new suppliers). However, a frequency analysis demonstrates that some franchisees engaged more in entrepreneurial behaviour than others. Only 12% of the respondents had a mean score below three (with a minimum of 2.25). So, almost all the franchisees have engaged in entrepreneurial behaviour, since 88% of the respondents score a minimum of three. It is interesting to check if the 12% that had a lower score on entrepreneurial behaviour also have significantly lower scores on the other variables. This can be checked with a Mann-Whitney test, which test is specifically designed to compare the scores of two groups on one variable when the sample size is below 60 (Vocht, 2012). The results from the Mann-Whitney test show that this small group of respondents score significantly different on ‘intention to be entrepreneurial’ (p<0.05) and ‘attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour’ (p<0.05) (see appendix C for the results of the Mann-Whitney test).
Table 2: Descriptive statistics
Min. Max. Mean Std. Dev. Scale
1. Past entrepreneurial behaviour 2.25 4.25 3.49 .51 1 - 5 2. Attitude 2.17 4.67 3.82 .55 1 - 5 3. Subjective normsA -6.67 5.33 .37 3.01 -8 - +8 4. PBC 3.00 4.75 3.67 .50 1 - 5 5. Performance – SalesB .16 .42 .31 .05 0 - 1 6. Performance – ProfitB .23 .49 .34 .05 0 - 1 7. Performance – Non-financialB .20 .53 .35 .07 0 - 1 8. Intention to be entrepreneurial 2.25 5.75 3.80 .69 1 - 5 A this variable is calculated by ‘motivation-to-comply’ x ‘belief’
B this variable is calculated by a ‘weighted satisfaction with performance index’
entrepreneurial (r= .599, p<0.01). Subjective norms are positively associated with the intention to be entrepreneurial (r= .638, p<0.01). Next, PBC is positively and significantly correlated with sales (r= .463, p<0.05) and education (r= .473, p<0.05), whereas it is negatively correlated with working hours (r= -.493, p<0.05) and non-financial performance (r= -.459, p<0.05). It is interesting to see that non-financial performance is positively correlated with both sales (r= .717, p<0.01) and profit (r= .854, p<0.01).
The results of the multiple regression analysis are represented in table 4. Model 1 reflects the relationship between the control variables and the intention to be entrepreneurial. This model’s outcome is insignificant (R2= .199, F= 1.741, p>0.01). Model 2 included the independent variables to determine which antecedents influence the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees. This model’s outcome is significant (R2= .791, F= 7.562, p<0.01).
Model 2 demonstrates that subjective norms are significantly related with the intention to be entrepreneurial (B= .107, p<0.01). However, this does not necessarily mean that the three reference groups that are part of subjective norms are separately significantly related to the intention to be entrepreneurial. In order to check for these possible differences between the three groups, an additional simple linear regression analysis was conducted. Each reference group was regressed with ‘intention to be entrepreneurial’ in a separate analysis (see appendix D). The results show that all three have significant relationships with the intention to be entrepreneurial: family and friends (B= .074, p<0.05), fellow-entrepreneurs outside the franchise (B= .091, p<0.05) and fellow-entrepreneurs within the franchise (B= .125, p<0.01).
The positive relations between the independent variables of past entrepreneurial behaviour (B= .395, p<0.01) and PBC (B= .519, p<0.05) with the intention to be entrepreneurial are also found significant. This implies that an increase in one of those antecedents leads to an increase in the intention to be entrepreneurial. Thus, hypotheses 2, 3 and 4 are supported. However, attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour does not have a significant relationship with the intention to be entrepreneurial in the analysis. So, hypothesis 1 is not supported.
variables and the R2 metric can only improve or stay the same by adding more variables. The adjusted R2 is a better metric to compare the models, since it penalizes a model for adding variables, which do not help to explain the change in the dependent variable (Vocht, 2012). The adjusted R2 of model 3 is higher compared to model 1 and 2 (.723 > .686 and .085), which indicates that including interaction effects is meaningful to explain the change in entrepreneurial behaviour better.
The moderating effect of the dimension ‘profit’ is slightly significant (B= .142, p<0.1), which indicates that there is a moderating effect of profit between past entrepreneurial behaviour and entrepreneurial intention, thus hypothesis 5b is supported. The moderating effect of the dimension ‘sales’ is insignificant (B= .101, p=0.46). Besides the dimension ‘sales’, also the moderating effect of the dimension ‘non-financial’ is insignificant (B= -.111, p=0.20). Therefore, both are not presented in the regression analysis table (table 4) but are presented in appendix E and F. Hypothesis 5a and 5c are not supported.
In order to understand the moderating effect of profit in more detail, an interaction plot was conducted. Figure 3 shows this interaction effect for profit. It shows that: 1) if franchisees were not entrepreneurial in the past (low past behaviour) but were satisfied with their profit in that same period (high past performance), there is no intention to be entrepreneurial in the future, 2) if franchisees were entrepreneurial in the past and were satisfied with their profit, they will have the intention to act entrepreneurially again, 3) if franchisees were not entrepreneurial in the past and were less satisfied with their profit, the intention to be entrepreneurial is high, 4) if franchisees were entrepreneurial in the past and were not satisfied with their profit, the intention to be entrepreneurial is also high.
Figure 3: Interaction plot for profit
Low Past behaviour High Past behaviour
5. DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION 5.1 Discussion
The current study aims to contribute to the academic literature by finding empirical evidence that reveals which antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviour actually lead to the intention to conduct entrepreneurial activities in a franchising context. Since this theory was seldom tested in a franchising context before, the results from this study will extend the understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour in the franchising literature. This current study used the TPB to get a better understanding of the antecedents of entrepreneurial intention in general and has modified this model to fit the franchising context. In addition to the TPB, the current study used past entrepreneurial behaviour as extension of the three antecedents (attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour, subjective norms and PBC), since other sources of literature (Ouellette & Wood, 1998) described past behaviour as possibly important fourth antecedent. Last, this study used past performance as moderator on the relation between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the intention to be entrepreneurial.
The relation between the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour and the intention to be entrepreneurial is found insignificant. This is in contradiction with many other TPB research results, which all found a significant positive relation between those two variables. There are multiple reasons that can explain these insignificant results. First, this study used a sample size of 25 respondents. This is a small sample size, which could have caused too little variance in the data to find significant relations with the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour. Second, research of Ketchen, Short, & Combs (2011) describes that the view of franchisees regarding their own possibilities concerning entrepreneurial behaviour is changing. In the past, franchising was considered as a highly standardized business concept with little space for entrepreneurial behaviour among the franchisees (Dant & Gundlach, 1999). However, as argued by Ketchen et al. (2011), this view changed during the last years to a view where franchisees do have room to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Due to the newness of this view, it is possible that (most) franchisees do not fully recognize their ‘freedom’ to engage in entrepreneurial activities yet and therefore have a relatively negative attitude toward this phenomenon.
follows the reasoning of Trafimow and Finlay (1996), who suggest that this result was caused by the use of a single-item measurement, which means that the respondents were only asked how important the opinion of the reference group is to them. Both Trafimow and Finlay (1996) and Armitage & Common (2001) suggest that this measurement method is unreliable and should be replaced by a multi-item scale. In order to avoid this measurement error, this study used the suggested multi-item measurement scale, which means that the belief and the motivation-to-comply became both part of this measurement scale. This implies that this scale does not only measure the franchisee’s perception about how important the reference groups find entrepreneurial behaviour, but also measures how important the franchisee perceives the opinion of the different reference groups. This measurement contributed to the significant results in this current study. These results make an empirical contribution to the argumentation of Trafimow and Finlay’s (1996), who argued to use this multi-item measurement for subjective norms. In addition, this finding is in line with theory discussed by Meek et al. (2010) who also used a multi-item measurement and concluded that subjective norms are an important antecedent for the entrepreneurial intentions of an individual.
Furthermore, the results show that the subjective norms obtained from the different reference groups all have a significant effect on the intention to be entrepreneurial. This is in contradiction with the argumentation of Krueger (2000), who suggested that subjective norms obtained from family and friends are less important for entrepreneurial activities than other reference groups. An explanation for this might be that Krueger (2000) focuses in his study on opportunity seeking, which can also be done by members of the organization. This current study focuses on the entrepreneurs themselves instead of on members of the organization. The subjective norms from family and friends for members of the organization might be less important than for entrepreneurs. Moreover, the study of Birley (1985) found that family and friends are the most often used source of help for entrepreneurs. They listen to the entrepreneur and give advice. Furthermore, entrepreneurs often receive the resources needed to start or grow their business from family and friends (i.e. Powell & Eddleston, 2017; Anderson, Jack & Dodd, 2005). Considering all the support of family and friends, franchisees could feel some form of pressure to perform well, which can be done in the form of improving the business by acting in an entrepreneurial way. So, subjective norms stemming from family and friends could be important for the franchisees.
research results of Cheng and Chu (2014), who found the same relationship in a non-franchising context.
Past entrepreneurial behaviour was added as antecedent to the TPB model. The results show that past entrepreneurial behaviour has a positive significant effect on the intention to be entrepreneurial. This study shows that past entrepreneurial behaviour is a suitable predictor for the intention to be entrepreneurial and was therefore rightfully added to the TPB model. This conclusion is in line with the findings of the meta-analysis of Ouellette and Wood (1998) that also argued that past behaviour directly predicts intentions.
The analysis of the moderating effect of the three dimensions of business unit performance on the relation between past entrepreneurial behaviour and the entrepreneurial intention has presented some important results too. The results show that only profit has a significant effect on this relation. The interaction plot for profit shows that; franchisees that were entrepreneurial in the past have higher entrepreneurial intention, regardless of the past profit results. The reason for this could be that it is the franchisees’ habit, which makes changing this behaviour harder. Besides, it could be that they think that entrepreneurial behaviour will have positive outcomes in the future. For franchisees that were not entrepreneurial in the past, this behaviour only changes if the financial results were poor. The reason for this could be that franchisees want to repair their poor results with entrepreneurial behaviour.
efficient by being more entrepreneurial (Michael, 1996). Moreover, the income of the franchisee is based on the profit of the franchise.
Next to the above-mentioned main findings about the hypothesised relations, the results show additional interesting findings. First of all, it shows that franchisees indeed engage in entrepreneurial behaviour. It must be noted that some franchisees engage more in entrepreneurial behaviour than others. This result is in line with several researchers who also stated that franchisees could act in an entrepreneurial way (i.e. Croonen et al., 2016; Dada et al. 2012; Windsperger, 2004). Furthermore, the franchisees that were less entrepreneurial in the past (a mean score < 3) differ significantly in the attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour than franchisees that engaged more in entrepreneurial behaviour in the past (a mean score ≥ 3). Their intention to be entrepreneurial was also significantly different. Moreover, the franchisees that were less entrepreneurial had a less positive attitude toward entrepreneurial behaviour and had less entrepreneurial intention than the other franchisees did. This could be explained by the fact that individuals typically want to stick to their habits. So, franchisees with less entrepreneurial behaviour will have a less positive attitude toward the opposite behaviour and less intention to be entrepreneurial.
5.2 Conclusion
The main question of this current study is: What is the effect of different antecedents on the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees? In order to answer this question the extended TPB model was used. The extended TPB model is a suitable predictor for the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees, since 82.7% of the change in the intention could be explained with the included variables. The results show that all three-reference groups are important for a franchisee in the entrepreneurial process. When franchisees feel that they are able to be entrepreneurial, the relation with the entrepreneurial intention strengthens. Franchisees that engaged in entrepreneurial activities in the past will repeat those activities. Furthermore, franchisees that were not entrepreneurial in the past will have entrepreneurial intention for the future if their profits were poor.
5.3 Implications
this current study complements the already existing evidence concerning entrepreneurial intentions with evidence about the role of past entrepreneurial behaviour in future intentions. As a result, increased linkages can be determined between antecedents and the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees. Furthermore, this current study shows that a multi-item measurement (using belief and motivation-to-comply) is a suitable way to capture subjective norms in a questionnaire. So, it is advisable for researchers to use this method instead of a single-item measurement. Next to that, past entrepreneurial behaviour is found to be a good predictor of the intention to be entrepreneurial among franchisees. So, researchers should also use this variable in order to predict the intention to be entrepreneurial.
6. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
The small sample size (N=25) is the first limitation of this current study. As a result of the small number of respondents, it was not possible to conduct a principle component analysis to check on the factor loading of the items. Future research should increase the number of respondents in order to check the factor loading of the items.
Second, the questionnaire was filled in by franchisees within one franchise system, which allowed this current study to control for industry related differences and to control differences between franchise systems (Davies et al., 2011), which increased the internal validity. However, this method has also disadvantages. It causes the findings to be less generalizable and therefore possibly not representative for other franchise systems. Although it is not likely that there are major differences between this and other franchise contexts, several researchers suggest that franchise systems have special characteristics and standardization levels (i.e. Dada et al., 2012; Clarkin & Rosa, 2005). So, in order to make the findings more generalizable, future research could replicate this research among different franchise systems in order to check if there are differences between the antecedents and intention of entrepreneurial behaviour between franchise systems.
A third limitation is that business unit performance is measured with subjective data. Despite the high reliability and validity of this method (i.e. Venkataraman & Ramanjam, 1987), a comparison with objective data would have increased the reliability and validity even more. Besides the reliability and validity, comparing the subjective data with objective data would prevent the possible existence of a self-reported bias. However, this study demonstrated that franchise systems are not always open for sharing objective data. It could be that the franchisor fears that competitors gain insights in these data or that business owners in general are reluctant to provide this type of information because of the new privacy legislation in The Netherlands. This will be a challenge for future researchers.
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