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Franchise outlets owned by entrepreneurial married couples are gradually increasing. Based upon prior research in resource-based view, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), franchising, and family business, the purpose of this paper is to analyze franchisor resources, spousal resources, and EO are critical to the development of franchisees’ performance.

–The author conducted a survey of 99 franchisees in couple-owned convenience store franchise outlets in Taiwan using the partial least squares technique.

It was found that franchisor resources, spousal resources, and EO directly affect franchisee performance. In addition, franchisor resources also have an indirect effect on performance through EO, but spousal resources do not have an indirect effect.

The franchisor should pay attention to the development of their resources and a franchisee's EO and the interaction between the franchisee and the spouse. Furthermore, a franchisee's EO facilitates the manipulation of the franchisor's resources.

This study highlights the possession of franchisor and spousal resources, and the importance of EO to foster and develop the franchisee performance in a couple-owned franchise outlet. These findings also suggest that franchisor resources have indirect effect on performance through EO.

This study provides a robust test of a central question in franchising: which factors influence the timing of adopting the first franchised outlet? Using a novel methodology, the purpose of this study is to examine the factors that accelerated or delayed the opening of the first franchisee outlet for the largest franchise chains in the USA.

The sample addresses a methodological shortcoming in traditional franchising literature. Using duration analysis, the paper captures the timing of the first franchise outlet for a retail concept. This allows us to capture the antecedents that explain the differences in timing between franchise systems.

By setting initial investment costs lower, the average time to attract the first franchisee is shorter. However, as franchisee net worth requirements rise, the time to attract the first franchisee is longer. Finally, franchisors tend to defer expansion via franchising in favor of managing their own outlets in resource rich industries.

The dataset is limited to the largest US franchise systems.

This study suggests factors that would cause franchisors to decelerate or accelerate the initial franchise timing decision. Businesses time expansion based on industry size, outlet start‐up costs, and franchisee net worth.

This study provides the first examination of the firm and industry drivers affecting when a firm initiates franchising. This study uses rigorous empirical testing of franchising theoretical predictions using duration analysis.

This study aims to provide an empirical test of an existing theoretical model depicting the governance modes used by international franchisors when entering international markets.

Using a unique panel data set of 222 market expansions by US firms over a seven-year period, this paper tests hypotheses regarding the factors affecting the franchisors’ choice of governance modes when entering foreign markets.

Franchisors use governance modes with lower levels of control when faced with environmental uncertainties due to corruption, economic downturns and when the geographic distance is large. Moreover, the franchise system assets and its local market assets also affect the choice of governance modes.

Firms need to balance the costs of environmental uncertainty with the need to safeguard the firm’s capabilities and resources using governance modes with appropriate levels of control. This balance changes as the franchise company gains more experience in the local market and as once-emerging markets continue to develop.

This research identified additional governance modes used by franchisors compared to previous studies. Using multiple theoretical perspectives, the study supported significant portions of the Jell-Ojobor and Windsperger (2014) model of franchisor governance mode choice.

This study aims to develop an instrument that examines the franchisor as an entrepreneurial form. Although examining the entrepreneurial tendencies of the franchisors has been a central goal of the present research, the study also uncovers the factors that lead firms to offer franchises and promote franchisor growth.

Data was collected from the population of franchisor organizations in India by following a survey approach. Statistical techniques including descriptive and inferential statistics like correlation and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

The study results show that franchisors possess entrepreneurship traits and reveal entrepreneurial behavior. The study also provides empirical evidence toward various dimensions that contribute to franchisor growth.

The results of the present study propose research implications toward clarification of the entrepreneurial position of the franchisors in the extensively unclear research area.

Considerable ambiguity surrounds franchisors’ activities running and managing their business as entrepreneurial firms. By indicating franchisors’ entrepreneurial traits, the study expatiates on major franchising and entrepreneurship literature arguments.

Although international franchising has occurred in East Asia over the past 20 years, surprisingly very little academic research has been undertaken to understand key dynamics of this marketing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine franchise resources, which is a key construct in the internationalization of retail franchising.

A multiple case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities inherent within such an international marketing relationship. The data were drawn from five US food service retail franchises, which are household brands across East Asia, operating in Singapore.

This study presents several interesting findings for the retail franchise industry. First, consistent with resource scarcity theory, international franchising relationship begins with a high degree of franchise dependency on the local franchisees. Next, international franchisors will be well served to select their overseas franchisees with strong financial resources to engage in rapid expansion, good contacts to secure early stores in prime retail locations and well‐proven local knowledge to modify the concept to suit particular market needs.

Findings from this study have important managerial implications for international retail franchisors on how to effectively select franchisees to successfully launch and manage their brands in East Asia.

This empirical study has made a major contribution in adding to the limited body of empirical knowledge on franchisee selection in international retail franchising, particularly in East Asia. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate why certain international retail franchise concepts perform relatively better in East Asia than others.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce strategy as a factor that explains when franchisors – through the franchisees they select – seek to replicate routines exactly versus allow local adaptation of routines.

Combined archival and survey data from 248 US and Canadian franchisors actively seeking franchisees were used to test hypotheses via structural equation modeling. The robustness of results was comprehensively explored.

As hypothesized, results suggest that franchisors pursuing plural form strategies select franchisees with traits that foster replication, such as prior managerial experience and the desire to become multi-outlet franchisees. Those franchisors pursuing turnkey strategies seek franchisees who exhibit a willingness to experiment and adapt. In contrast to expectations, plural form franchisors were more likely to seek franchisees with local market knowledge.

Strategy influences whether franchisors select franchisees who will replicate versus adapt organizational routines. The authors introduce strategy as a factor affecting the extent to which routines are replicated exactly versus adapted locally. For franchising research, they challenge prior theory by explaining why franchisors invest in franchisee selection rather than waiting for the best franchisees to self-select into franchising.

The Indian power distribution companies are increasingly recognizing franchising for reviving their high loss-making rural pockets. The motivation for franchising has been a reduction of the franchisor's resource scarcity by bringing in operational efficiency and improved service quality to end consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence on the influence of the franchisee's operations in addressing the resource scarcity of franchisors in predominantly rural areas. This study contributes towards filling the research gap.

A qualitative embedded multiple case study was conducted. The cases comprised two rural franchisees operating towards attaining the common goal. The study was built on archival analysis, personal observations and semi-structured interviews with the franchisors and franchisee officials across the organization's hierarchical levels. A conceptual model based on the review of prior literature formed the initial set of coding for the study. The data were presented based on within-case and across-case analysis.

The analysis revealed that the contract design impacts the requisite operational efficiency achievement. This variation could be elaborated by factors, such as system adaptation across organizational hierarchy, autonomy and independence, review and feedback systems, monitoring, a professional's attitude, bureaucracy, adaption with the local areas, risk sharing, incentives and compensation structure.

The study findings could be generalized to the extent of similar socio-economic conditions, prevailing governance mechanisms and law and orders. Additionally, since the law does not mandate the regulatory commissions to scrutinize the performance of the franchisees, the study was built on data shared by the franchisees and the discom. Further, this study considered the performance of only two performing franchisees. Matching these actualities with the discoveries of this study remains a continuing project as participation of private players is increasingly being recognized. Therefore, the insights drawn from this study could be used to improve the franchise model and can be scaled up across the nation, regions and sectors.

There is a dearth of literature on franchising in electricity distribution. This study is one of the first studies on studying the franchise system in the electricity distribution sector through the application of a well-accepted management theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of participative franchising on performance from the franchisee perspective. In particular, the paper analyses the impact of the franchisee autonomy – in human resource management and marketing decisions – affective commitment to the network and network innovativeness on the franchisee relative performance.

A survey answered by 226 franchisees in France allowed to estimate a structural equations model through partial least squares regression analysis to test the hypothesised relations between autonomy, affective commitment, innovativeness and performance.

According to the authors’ findings, franchisee’s autonomy in commercial policies, mediated by to franchisor’s ability to innovate and acknowledge innovations stemming from the franchisees, and the affective commitment to the network, emerge as strong determinants of the franchisee’s performance.

The results confirm the conclusions of other research, but extend and integrate them, providing evidence that the role of participative franchising should not be neglected.

The results obtained provide evidence about the importance of bidirectional communication instruments in the relations between franchisor and franchisee, and participation tools for the identification, recognition and support to the innovative successful practices developed by franchisees to be quickly implemented by other franchisees in the network.

This paper looks at franchisee autonomy, affective commitment and innovativeness as potential determinants of franchisee’s performance, being the latter an underexplored topic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether operating countries influence restaurant franchising system performance and what would be an optimal international franchise proportion.

The authors observed ten publicly traded franchise firms that operated between 1995 and 2015. Data analysis is conducted through a generalized linear model (GLM) of panel data.

The model confirms a curvilinear U-shaped relationship between international franchise expansion and firm performance, similar to domestic franchising. The authors found that international franchisors have a higher optimal franchise proportion than domestic franchisors. The authors did not find that operating countries influence firm performance.

This study contributes to franchising literature by expanding limited empirical studies on international franchising. It provides practitioners with a new optimal franchise proportion at the international level.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate international franchise performance. It focuses on how franchisors conceive their international performance, the drivers of their international performance, and how age-at-entry moderates the impact of their resources and capabilities (R&C) on international performance.

Using the lens of the resource-based view of the firm, the authors build on franchisor voice from a qualitative study (n=28) to propose a research model of international franchise performance. A second, quantitative study (n=89) tests the model with PLS structural equation modeling.

Franchisors view international performance in terms of relationship satisfaction with foreign franchisees and performance in comparison to competitors. The empirical results show that relationship satisfaction significantly improves comparative performance. Both franchisor-owned resources, the brand and knowhow, enhance only comparative performance, while all three international relational capabilities, related to knowhow transfer, monitoring, and contract design, and both reconfigurational capabilities, related to organizational responsiveness and innovativeness, improve relationship satisfaction. Only contract design and innovativeness increase comparative performance. Finally, late internationalization reinforces franchisor ability to leverage relational and reconfigurational capabilities for better relationship satisfaction.

This paper contributes to research on international franchise performance. It uses a mixed-method design and offers the first quantitative investigation of the drivers of international franchise performance. This research also integrates the role of franchisor R&C with franchisor strategic choices, through the moderating effect of internationalization timing.