• The Local Intension Chain Strategy and Organization Control – A Case Study in the Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry

Abstract

This research aims to explore the impact on the competitiveness when a firm adopted a local intension strategy to expand chain stores in a specific geographical market. This paper is a case study investigating a residential real estate brokerage firm in Great Taichung area. Specially, the firm developed its chain stores extensively by its unique allied strategy and managing system in local market. This study provided a theoretical structure of a local intension chain strategy and its management & control mechanisms by analyzing the deep interview, as well as the secondary data such as firm publications. The findings would suggest that: (1) when the market’s competitiveness was weak and the competitive context was under lacking of organization resource, being the expert of geographical location, segmenting product from competitors, and having local alliance history, the franchisor tended to adopt the strategy of district market penetration to resist the pressure from strong competitors; (2) there were two primary core criteria to develop intensive chain stores: one was the low threshold positioning to attract more franchisees and expand quickly; the other was the geographic intension to collect intensively the valuable information of the local market and capture at core resources (i.e. local market information and customer relationship) to promote competitive advantage; (3) it was feasible to strengthen organization competitiveness when the marketing promotion and management & control mechanisms based on trust were considered in implementing local intension strategy.

Keywords: Franchise, Chain Strategy, Market Penetration, Organization Control, Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry