5. Discussion
5.1. Summary of the findings
Our findings shed light on how a franchisor’s characteristics and partnering strategies impact its adoption and use of LinkedIn for attracting and retaining franchisees and employees and how a franchisor’s use of LinkedIn influences the number of followers of its LinkedIn page.
One key result is that franchisor adoption of LinkedIn is positively influenced by franchise chain size, franchising fees, franchisor marketing communications and franchisor qualification expectations for prospective franchisees (as hypothesized). We also find that, contrary to our hypothesis, franchisor adoption of LinkedIn is negatively affected by franchise concept complexity. Two possible explanations may exist for this result. First, franchise chains with more complex franchise concepts may need to grow (and therefore seek prospective franchisees) less aggressively. Second, franchisors with more complex concepts may already interact regularly with franchisees and employees and not feel the need to have a presence on LinkedIn.
A second important finding is that, among franchisors who adopt LinkedIn, the extent of use of LinkedIn is positively impacted by franchise chain size and franchising fees (as hypothesized) and negatively affected by franchise chain age. The latter result is contradictory to our hypothesis and suggests that although older chains may have greater resources, they may also be somewhat more rigid and bureaucratic and, consequently, less likely to extensively develop their LinkedIn page. An implication of this could be that the desire for institutional legitimacy and the consequent institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) plays a key role in explaining adoption of LinkedIn by older chains. Once such chains set up LinkedIn pages, they do not invest in creating a rich LinkedIn page.
