Franchising : Focusing on Franchisees' Perspective in the Swedish Retailing Industry

Abstract: Franchising is an important global business phenomenon, yet most research in the field is allocated to the American market. In addition, the majority of conducted research on the topic of franchising is considering the franchisor perspective, even though a franchising establishment is a relationship between two parties; the franchisor and the franchisee. Recent trends in franchising research is to further extend the body of literature by considering the franchisee perspective as well as markets other than the U.S. This qualitative thesis considers Sweden, a market with great potential for further franchising development. This potential arises from the fact that Sweden is the country in Europe with the lowest percentage of households having problems making ends meet (6.8%), leaving consumers with large disposable incomes and hence, making it an interesting market to engage in.  Despite these obvious opportunities in the Swedish market, research focused on the Swedish franchise industry is limited to a few reports where the majority of research conducted merely considers franchising to a small extent. Aiming to be the next step to a greater understanding of franchising in a Swedish context, this thesis considers franchising in the Swedish retailing industry, represented by franchisees from the Swedish sports retailing industry. The thesis comprises in-depth interviews with a multidimensional interviewee-group of five interviewees, both current as well as former franchisees in the Swedish sports retailing industry. The study resulted in indications on franchisee satisfaction in Sweden in terms of control methods (i.e. behavior or outcome control) as well as propensity to central decision rights (i.e. allocation towards centralized or decentralized). Potential underlying factors to the abovementioned indications are also analyzed and explained. In addition, the study proposes numerous indications as to what further research is to focus on in order to extend the knowledge of the Swedish franchising industry to a more holistic view.