This work demonstrates the very existence of economic rents in franchising using, for the first time, the franchisees’ actual financial statements. This finding makes franchising more appealing for applicants and supports the hypothesis that rents are efficient devices to motivate franchisees.

This paper draws on the dynamic capabilities approach to explain the performance of franchised chains. This approach is a useful lens to understand why some chains are more likely to drive superior performance than others. Hence, using this theoretical lens, we explore why and how several...

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new model allowing the implementation of a benchmarking process that jointly measure the efficiency of franchise chains and determine their optimal organizational form. The methodology is based on a non-econometric technique developed by management...

A meta-DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) approach is used to analyse the impact of the industry in which the franchisor operates its business on its chain efficiency by comparing chain efficiency between and across industries (retail versus services). To provide realistic short-term and long-term...

We use a unique proprietary panel data set from a large hotel company to study how organizational form affects hotel pricing and performance. Aggregate data patterns suggest sizable performance differences between franchised and company-operated hotels. However, after controlling for other...