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The cricket Indian Premier League (IPL) was set up in late 2007 and played for the first time in 2008. The IPL is probably the first time in the history of professional team sport that an Asian league has become stronger than a European one. This paper examines the IPL's first year of operation, comparing its organisation with Major League Baseball and the English Football League. The paper concludes that the IPL has more in common with Major League Baseball, although it has, in some respects, proved more flexible than both in its mode of operation.

This study examined the Twenty20 cricket competition launched in England and Wales in 2003. The findings identified that the competition has many of the characteristics which current diffusion models believe to be critical success factors. However, most research focused on American and Australian sports, and two key contextual factors are excluded: both timing and weather have been critical factors in the competition's success.

In The Times (10th July 1992) the following by line appeared on p1 ‘Body Shop wins unholy row with businesswoman’; announcing that Sir Peter Pain, sitting as a High Court judge, had granted an injunction restraining a Mrs Pauline Rawle, who was described as ‘an evangelical Christian woman’ from using the ‘Body Shop’ name in respect of six franchised shops in Bromley, Maidstone, Canterbury, Romford and Croydon (2 branches). It was alleged that the ‘close relationship’ essential to the franchise contract between Mrs Rawle and the Body Shop ‘had clearly broken down’. Mrs Rawle allegedly told staff to have nothing to do with Body Shop representatives and alleged a conspiracy against her and comparing herself with God and the Body Shop organisation to Satan! Mass dismissals of staff followed and the franchises were temporarily closed and re‐opened with inferior standards. This case is one of the few reported decisions on franchise operation in the UK.

This article examines the current status of franchising in Saudi Arabia. Despite the fact that Saudi Arabia exhibits some attractive characteristics for an intensive penetration of this form of distribution, franchising has made a limited appearance in some major cities of the Kingdom, primarily in the fastfood services area. After reviewing the history of the franchising scene in Saudi Arabia and identifying some of the prominent participants in this area, the article describes a number of problems that could be hindering a more successful exploitation of franchising in the Kingdom. Some practical solutions are also outlined.

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on international franchising. Franchising is a model for businesses to achieve scale with limited resources. International franchising is a mode of entry that allows firms to develop new markets with relatively little risk but also little control.

Using a systematic approach, the paper identifies all articles in the ISI Web of Science from 1970 to 2018 that includes the term international franchising (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 131 articles. This paper used HistCite software to analyze the bibliometric data.

Four major research clusters in the international franchising literature are identified. In addition, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, theories and methodologies from the 1970s through 2018. The paper presents the most influential articles, authors and journals.

From the analyzes, this study develops a conceptual framework of international franchising and suggest avenues for future research.

Offers an overview of the well‐established and growing franchising sector in Brazil, which encompasses almost 1,000 brands in 23 different sectors; lists the sectors involved and a number of the major foreign chains operating in the country, together with statistics on numbers of employees, turnover, initial investment by franchisees and payback time. Details the activities of the Brazilian Franchise Association (ABF) which exists to promote franchising in the country and has recently launched a training course for potential franchisees; considers the future prospects for franchising in Brazil.

As the global economy expands, it would seem to be in the interests of the major professional sport leagues of the US to move into new markets, especially China, one of the fastest growing and largest in the world. In order to sell effectively in this market, it is vital to gain an understanding of the potential fan base. To explore national differences in fandom, a survey was completed by sports fans in both China and the US to assess which sports participants followed and which media they used, to identify fan motives and their feelings about expansion. This study determined that there are clear differences between Chinese and Americans. While many of the Chinese were fans of American sports, they tended to follow individual athletes rather than teams and had relatively low fan identity but high levels of fan motivation. Motives also varied by country, with aesthetics and affiliation the primary motives among the Chinese sample. These distinctions can be utilised to create marketing strategies.

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.

This study aims to develop a performance evaluation model for Facebook (FB) marketing campaigns (FBMCs) for a franchised hotel, distinguish four quadrants based on efficiency and customer attention and suggest improvements for inefficient FBMCs based on the slack value analysis.

The paper applied the elaboration likelihood model to select three inputs (text, picture and color) and three outputs (number of people reached; reactions, comments and shares; and clicks on post) based on the literature and expert opinions to assess 60 FBMCs for hotels through data envelopment analysis and a robustness test. The four-quadrant analysis (benchmark, improvements in efficiency and customer attention and fade-out) provides suggestions for underperforming FBMCs.

The results indicate that the efficiency of the greeting FBMCs is better than that of the event and promotion FBMCs. The projection of input value analysis showed that an average of 50 words, one picture and six colors is the benchmark of FBMCs.

Sixty FBMCs for the same franchised hotel were examined. Further research could extend this model to different hotels for generalization.

The findings suggest that developing shorter text lengths, concise photos and colors of greeting messages on FB could be efficient for FBMCs.

This paper contributes in assessing the performance of FBMCs to identify the benchmark FBMCs with the higher efficiency and more customer attention for a franchised hotel.

The purpose of this paper is to review and extend previous work involving branding and website performance and aesthetics by applying a best-worst scaling (BWS) approach. Respondents were tasked with choosing the best and worst from 16-brand attribute statements representing website communications and aesthetics, a more effective understanding of consumer segmentation is revealed between the offline facility to the online retail experience.

A research design utilising BWS was deployed to provide an alternate perspective of consumer choice in an omni-channel retail environment.

Findings indicate a bifurcated audience with one-half reliant on communication and the other half on aesthetics is most important in the online environment when generating a positive relationship towards the retail brand.

This study was conducted within a single retail format category (sportswear and apparel) so future studies need to estimate cross-category implications. The authors also suggest online experimental designs for consumers to compare traditional retail brand images. Finally as this study utilised Australian responses only the authors suggest cross-cultural comparisons to better understand the universal nature of website functionality and its link with traditional retail formats.

Retail executives will find the results from this study useful in two ways. To ensure consistency of brand image across channels managers must communicate efficiently and effectively. Brand managers must mediate between customer segments with some preferring clear concise website communications and others well established aesthetics.

This study adopts a BWS approach to better understand consumer choices in an online/offline branding environment.