Online communication management in franchise companies. The use of Facebook in the service sector

Se plantea un estudio en torno a la gestión de la comunicación, a través de Facebook, por diferentes enseñas de franquicias del sector servicios (mensajería y transporte urgente, telefonía móvil y agencias de viajes). Partiendo de un análisis de los contenidos y del nivel de interacción de las diferentes enseñas con sus públicos, se pretende conocer la actividad generada en dicha red social. La hipótesis afirma que las empresas de franquicia del sector servicios están presentes activamente en Facebook. El objetivo es analizar la presencia de las principales franquicias internacionales de los sub-sectores; estudiar la página de Facebook y determinar la existencia de cuentas del franquiciador o de franquiciados. La metodología empleada parte de una revisión documental de fuentes relacionadas con la franquicia y las redes sociales, haciendo hincapié en Facebook. Este análisis se cumplimentará con un estudio exploratorio de nueve enseñas del sector seleccionado. Los principales resultados muestran que, a pesar de que todas las enseñas tienen actividad en Facebook, su comportamiento es variable.A study dealing communication management through social networks, more precisely Facebook, will be presented, following different franchise companies in the tertiary sector: courier/express transport, mobile telephony, travel agencies. Taking as the starting point for the research the analysis of contents and the level of interaction of different franchises and their audiences, a close study of the social network activity of those previously selected franchises will be shown. The hypothesis to be tested is that of franchise companies being increasingly active on Facebook. The analysis will consider the presence of the main global franchise companies in the following sectors: courier/express transport, mobile telephony, travel agencies with activity in Spain and on Facebook. The website of the company will be examined in detail so as to determine the presence of franchisor and franchisee accounts, registering the number of followers, edited posts and their main features (positive, negative or neutral). The methodology being used has been based on a thorough documentary review of sources related to franchising and social networks, specifically Facebook. The analysis is completed throughout an exploratory study of nine franchises of the selected sector. The results show that, in spite of the fact that all franchise companies have active presence on Facebook, their online behavior varies considerably