Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of participative franchising on performance from the franchisee perspective. In particular, the paper analyses the impact of the franchisee autonomy – in human resource management and marketing decisions – affective commitment to the network and network innovativeness on the franchisee relative performance. Design/methodology/approach A survey answered by 226 franchisees in France allowed to estimate a structural equations model through partial least squares regression analysis to test the hypothesised relations between autonomy, affective commitment, innovativeness and performance. Findings According to the authors’ findings, franchisee’s autonomy in commercial policies, mediated by to franchisor’s ability to innovate and acknowledge innovations stemming from the franchisees, and the affective commitment to the network, emerge as strong determinants of the franchisee’s performance. Research limitations/implications The results confirm the conclusions of other research, but extend and integrate them, providing evidence that the role of participative franchising should not be neglected. Practical implications The results obtained provide evidence about the importance of bidirectional communication instruments in the relations between franchisor and franchisee, and participation tools for the identification, recognition and support to the innovative successful practices developed by franchisees to be quickly implemented by other franchisees in the network. Originality/value This paper looks at franchisee autonomy, affective commitment and innovativeness as potential determinants of franchisee’s performance, being the latter an underexplored topic.

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PurposeThe digitalization of an organization implies centralizing the data collected. Nevertheless, the management of customer data in franchise networks is a delicate, complicated and little studied issue. The purpose of this paper is to investigate its challenges and the keys to success, by developing a conceptual framework resulting from a qualitative study and a literature review.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study was carried out with around 30 franchisors, franchisees and franchise experts in the light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The results of the qualitative study helped to clarify our theoretical framework and to position ourselves on the side of the founding theories of relationship marketing. A research model was then defined and tested using a quantitative survey administered to a total sample of 192 franchisors and franchisees.FindingsThe results of the various studies show that relationship quality, through inter-organizational commitment, explains the achievement of marketing performance in franchise networks. In addition, the place of relationship quality depends on four essential variables: inter-organizational communication, franchisee autonomy, technical and human resources and contractualization of customer data management.Originality/valueThis study focuses on a topic that has received very little attention, particularly in franchise networks. It uses a mixed-methods design that has enabled the identification of key variables contributing to the achievement of marketing and sales performance in a data management context.