The selection of international retail franchisees in East Asia

Purpose – 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 thismarketing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine franchise resources, which is a keyconstruct in the internationalization of retail franchising.Design/methodology/approach – A multiple case study approach has been adopted to generaterich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities inherent within such an internationalmarketing relationship. The data were drawn from five US food service retail franchises, which arehousehold brands across East Asia, operating in Singapore.Findings – This study presents several interesting findings for the retail franchise industry. First,consistent with resource scarcity theory, international franchising relationship begins with a highdegree of franchise dependency on the local franchisees. Next, international franchisors will be wellserved to select their overseas franchisees with strong financial resources to engage in rapidexpansion, good contacts to secure early stores in prime retail locations and well-proven localknowledge to modify the concept to suit particular market needs.Practical implications – Findings from this study have important managerial implications forinternational retail franchisors on how to effectively select franchisees to successfully launch andmanage their brands in East Asia.Originality/value – This empirical study has made a major contribution in adding to the limitedbody of empirical knowledge on franchisee selection in international retail franchising, particularly inEast Asia. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate why certaininternational retail franchise concepts perform relatively better in East Asia than others.