Franchising and the internationalization of businesses: the case of fast food chains

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of franchising in the process of internationalization of the fast food industry. The paper hypothesizes that franchising is an effective means of internationalization in the fast food industry that increases the revenues of the company. The hypothesis of the paper will be tested using the linear regression analysis. This analysis studies the relationship between revenues (dependent variable) and the number of outlets and the number of employees (independent variables). The sample includes 15 fast food chains from the list of 100 top franchises of 2017. The study of the annual reports of these 15 fast food chains revealed a correlation between the company’s decision to go global through franchising and the growth of its revenues. It is necessary to build a literature on the role of franchising in the internationalization of business. The originality of this paper lies in the way it seeks to illuminate future academic research on the impact of franchising as an internationalization process on business revenues.