Franchising Research in a European Context

Abstract

Despite references to franchising’s rapid growth as ‘spectacular’ an ‘explosion’ (Chan, 1994), there remains a notable lack of research into franchising in a European perspective. Studies of contemporary literature show a lack of franchising research generally (Hamilton and Watts, 1998), and little on international franchising issues (Elango and Fried, 1997), (Hoffman and Preble, 1995). This paper presents an overview of franchising in the existing literature, considers marketing issues relevant to European franchising from a critical perspective and poses key questions and directions for future research.