This research seeks to discover how the organisational form (franchising vs. vertical integration) of 305 supermarkets belonging to a Spanish franchise chain influences unit-level performance measured through three key performance indicators commonly used in the retail literature: sales per square metre, sales per employee, and service quality scores. Additionally, we assess the moderating role of the manager's gender in each individual supermarket. We have analysed the research questions using multivariate analyses, with a panel dataset that includes quarterly establishment-level data covering the period from January 2017 to December 2019. We have found that franchised supermarkets record higher sales both per square metre and per employee than vertically integrated ones. This positive effect of franchising is lower in establishments run by females than in those run by males. The findings also reveal that franchised supermarkets record lower service quality scores than their company-owned counterparts, and this negative effect is again lower in establishments managed by females than in those managed by males.

本研究旨在发现属于西班牙特许经营连锁店的 305 家超市的组织形式（特许经营与垂直整合）如何影响通过零售文献中常用的三个关键绩效指标衡量的单位水平绩效：每平方米销售额、每平方米销售额员工和服务质量得分。此外，我们评估了每个超市中经理性别的调节作用。我们使用多变量分析对研究问题进行了分析，面板数据集包括涵盖 2017 年 1 月至 2019 年 12 月期间的季度企业级数据。我们发现，特许超市的每平方米和每位员工的销售额均高于垂直整合那些。在女性经营的机构中，特许经营的这种积极影响低于男性经营的机构。调查结果还显示，特许超市的服务质量得分低于公司所有的同行，而且这种负面影响在女性管理的机构中再次低于男性管理的机构。