Ilan Alon - Franchising Globally: Innovation, Learning and Imitation

Franchising Globally

GLOBAL MARKETING (With Eugene Jaffe) (Forthcoming)

SERVICE FRANCHISING: A Global Perspective

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF U.S. FRANCHISING SYSTEMS

A GUIDE TO TOP 100 COMPANIES IN CHINA, SINGAPORE: World Scientific (With Zhang and Wenxian) (Forthcoming)

BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF NEW CHINESE ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESS LEADERS (With Zhang and Wenxian)

CHINA RULES: GLOBALIZATION AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION (With Julian Chang, Marc Fetscherin, Christoph Lattemann, and John McIntyre)

THE GLOBALIZATION OF CHINESE ENTERPRISES (With John McIntyre).

THE NEW GLOBAL SOCIETY, series editor,

1. GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT (Eugene D. Jaffe)

2. GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS (Alma Kadragic)

3. GLOBALIZATION AND LABOR (Peter Enderwick)

4. GLOBALIZATION AND POVERTY (Nadejda Ballard)

5. GLOBALIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT (Howon Jeong)

6. GLOBALIZATION, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE (Richard Lee)

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN CHINA: Transition, Pedagogy and Training (With John R. McIntyre)

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN TRANSITIONING AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A Handbook (With McIntyre, John R.)

BUSINESS EDUCATION AND EMERGING MARKET ECONOMIES: Perspectives and Best Practices (With John R. McIntyre)

CHINESE ECONOMIC TRANSITION AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGY

CHINESE CULTURE, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING IN INDUSTRIALIZED MARKETS: Western and Northern Europe (With Dianne Welsh)

INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING IN INDUSTRIALIZED MARKETS: North America, Pacific Rim, and Other Developed Countries (With Welsh, Dianne)

INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING IN EMERGING MARKETS: China, India and Other Asian Countries (With Dianne Welsh)

INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISING IN EMERGING MARKETS: Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America (With Welsh, Dianne)

Innovation, Learning and Imitation

Ilan Alon

George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Chair of International Business, Director, The China Center at Rollins College, Rollins College, Florida, USA

Ilan Alon

Ilan Alon, Dianne H.B. Welsh, and Cecilia M. Falbe

Ilan Alon and Marc Sardy

Ilan Alon, Liqiang Ni, and Raymond (Youcheng) Wang

Ilan Alon and Amir Shoham

Ilan Alon and Donata Vianelli

Ilan Alon and Rachid Alami

Ilan Alon, Mirela Alpeza, and Aleksandar Erceg

Ilan Alon, Matthew C. Mitchell, and J. Mark Munoz

Ilan Alon and Allen Kupetz

Ilan Alon, Grard Cliquet, Matthew C. Mitchell, and Rozenn Perrigot

Ilan Alon, Mirela Alpeza, and Aleksandar Erceg

Ilan Alon

Ilan Alon

This book is the outcome of work spanning several years and involving numerous supportive individuals. I will first like to acknowledge all my chapter co-authors, without whom this book would not be possible. This book features a compilation of my work on the topic and summarizes the extent of my contribution to the field of global franchising.

Individual chapters also benefited from the comments and reviews of various people and organizations. I would especially like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of Journal of Small Business Management, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Mercati e Competitivita, Management Online Review, and Ivey Business School.

Finally, if it was not for my dedicated family, wife and two beautiful children, I would not be able to muster the energy, time and intellectual capital that are required to put together a book of this sort. I thank God for blessing me with supportive family, friends, and colleagues, and for providing me with an auspicious environment for research. Rollins College is the premier liberal arts school in Florida, with an emphasis on global citizenship and responsible leadership.

Forms of franchising have been around for a long time, dating back to the I.M. Singer (Sewing) Co. and the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. (eventually, International Harvester), but it has only been in the last 40 years that we have been systematically studying franchisors in an attempt to help entrepreneurs and managers successfully build their franchised chains. In those years, we have come a long way toward understanding when franchising makes sense, what kind of contract terms will aid growth and survival, and how to recruit and work with franchisees successfully. As with much academic research, though, our knowledge is largely built on evidence from well-developed markets, especially the United States. Unfortunately, what works in the U.S., as so many have learned the hard way, often does not translate into international success especially in emerging markets.

Professor Alon has devoted much of his career to reconciling what we know in a domestic U.S. context with on-the-ground realities in a diverse set of international markets. Franchising Globally builds upon and ties together much of what we learned in his prior books on international franchising with a specific focus on emerging markets. The book is a rare combination of well-executed academic analysis and case studies supported by detailed interviews, all deepened by Ilan Alons breadth of experience and enriched by featured coauthors. The result is the construction of useful insights that are both academically rigorous and grounded in practice. The book should aid academics wishing to learn more about franchising in a variety of international contexts, and practicing franchisors pondering the possibilities of emerging markets. Let me highlight three particularly exciting features.

First, Franchising Globally combines in one place broad generalizable models that guide thinking about franchising in emerging markets with detailed information about specific firms and markets. From the broad models, we learn about the general context of emerging markets, factors that distinguish franchisees from independent entrepreneurs, antecedents to international franchising decisions, and commonalities and differences among important international markets. These offer academics a foundation for building better theories to explain franchise activities in emerging markets, and furnish managers with broad guidelines to consider in relation to their own firms attributes. Each firm and potential market is unique, however, and what works in general often fails in the particular. This is where the cases step in. Managers can relate unique problems and challenges confronted by a specific firm in a specific market to their own unique situation, and academics might see the seeds of patterns that will form the baseline for future theory development. Together, these broad generalizable models and detailed cases provide a rich resource for considering expansion via franchising into emerging markets.

By blending the broad and generalizable with detailed cases, a second noteworthy feature of this book is that you can fruitfully pick and choose among chapters based on what interests you. If your interest is in whether and how it might make sense for a successful firm to expand from a developed market into an emerging market, the analysis in Chapter 3 can be read along with the cases that involve a potential entry in Chapter 9 and a failed entry attempt in Chapter 12. If your interest is hotels, the analyses in Chapters 3 and 5 can be fruitfully used in conjunction with the Best Western case in Chapter 10. Overall, there are many ways to mix and match the chapters in this book to satisfy your curiosity about a number of specific research questions, industries, and markets.