Quality indicators for success and excellence of franchisee network

Franchising is a distribution model that supports the creation of new businesses (franchisees). This can be a driving force for the economic growth of a country, such as Italy, hit by the economic crisis. For future challenges the new businesses should be virtuous and successful. The success comes from the ability to innovate (product or manufacturing process), but also, from the relationship with the customer. The quality of customer service is central, because it can arouse competitive advantages. A high level of quality service, in fact, can point out a different and innovative use of the product to the customer, can stimulate new behaviors and can increase the market demand. For this reason it is essential that firms operate according to the principles of total quality. The quality must be pervasive for all franchisees, and consequently the human resource is crucial to its achievement. The human resource should be seen as a set of organized relations with a culture of quality. Therefore, it is essential informing and training the franchisees staff about the total quality standard behaviors. Moreover, quality has to be fix in advance by set of specific quality indicators. Only through these quality indicators, franchisees can follow a growth path, and to be able comparing excellent quality to bad quality and define correct actions. As objective of our research, We propose a set of quality indicators for franchisees and their application to case studies. Our work consists of three parts. In the first part we offer a brief description of the franchising in Italy. In the second we identify the factors leading to success in franchising and how the Total Quality is the glue. The third part proposes a methodology for the construction of indicators of perceived quality and of standard quality