Communications Across the Sales Channels

Pick a franchise and discuss whether or not the communications at the franchises are the same as the parent corporation.  Give specific communication examples and discuss why these do or do not match the messaging of the larger brand. How can the parent corporation measure its relationships with the franchisees? Be specific.

A franchise I'm more familiar with is owned by the Kroger Co. which operates, well... Kroger stores in our region. As the nation's largest grocery chain store it also operates in other regions under different names. In addition they own many other types of businesses including the jewelery store subsidiary of Fred Meyer. Because of the size and number of entities operating under this organization communication is key but at the same time it is very different when contacting the parent organization is different than the individual entities.

As an employee communicating with the parent corporation generally you are passed to a regional department. There was however a way to communicate directly with the larger organization for specific situations, and they even mentioned we could contact the leadership directly for more serious circumstances. Online employee forums were also created to enhance communication between employees. I imagine a lot of the corporate communications dealt with legal things however, which I never had any experience with. So I can't give any personal accounts. For customers there are a number of ways to get in contact, many of which are listed on the corporate website: http://www.thekrogerco.com/contact-us. For more specific inquiries related to the Kroger brand stores there are specific sites with contact information. For example the actual Kroger chain can be found here: http://www.kroger.com/help/Pages/contact_us.aspx.

Like many organizations customer satisfaction is a key goal for the Kroger Co. By allowing individuals to contact both the corporation, each franchise, and even specific stores they help to enhance communication and better satisfy the customer. Maintaining a good relationship with the franchises and properly managing them are also important goals for an organization such as this. 

One way the Kroger Co. manages its franchises is through reviewing processes. I believe a number of reviews were conducted in the franchise but the one I witnessed while working actually included the presence of a high level corporate representative. I don't believe he was sent to all the store however and just came to ours because at the time it operated at the greatest efficiency. Surveys were conducted of all the employees at the store to get our input on what has been going well and what needed to improve.

To measure the actual effectiveness of an organization's communication web analytics could be used. Listening to what people are saying in social media outlets for instance can generate a rough idea on how people feel an organization is communicating. Monitoring news sources and other things such as blogs can also generate an idea and listen to what people are saying. All this information can be used to find how the company can improve its communications with the public as well as internally.