Identifying Latent Service Dimensions in Service Supply Chains Using Topic Modelling : An Analysis of Franchised and Independent Businesses

Many service sector firms have utilised franchising to expand their business, and past literature has theorised and empirically investigated the antecedents of the strategy. This study examines the outcomes of franchising in the online food delivery sector from the customer’s perspective and identifies several latent factors that represent issues of importance during the processes of producing and delivering products/services. The disparity of performance between franchised and independent businesses across the identified latent dimensions is also investigated. The analysis is based on an originally constructed dataset that contains 553,807 reviews (with textual input) of 10,894 franchised and independent restaurants, posted on JustEat. Structural topic modelling is the chosen text analytic technique, followed by fractional logistic regression analysis Results indicate that for all restaurants, product quality and delivery service are the two prominent dimensions mentioned by customers. Moreover, topics relating to complaints about order processing are more dominant in reviews of franchised restaurants, while praise about food quality is more dominant in reviews of independent restaurants. The findings could provide managerial insights for franchisors and independent entrepreneurs in the online food delivery sector, on which stages of the service supply chain should be enhanced