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Experts predict that by the year 2000, an astounding 50 percent of all retail sales will pass through a franchise chain. Yet, for all its growing importance, the franchise phenomenon remains largely undocumented and poorly understood, with very little grounded insight available on the management challenges that chains face. Now, with his landmark book Franchise Organizations, Jeffrey Bradach fills this void with a penetrating look at the key factors that shape a franchise's success. Using compelling examples from major restaurant chains, including KFC, Pizza Hut, Hardee's, and Jack in the Box, Bradach extracts the ingredients that make for a thriving enterprise. Clear and engaging, this is essential reading for understanding and managing today's franchise business.
Customer Review: Useful and insightful.
Bradach looks at organizational issues and challenges as they relate to franchise organizations. He particularly focuses on fast food franchises which have a combination of company-owned and franchise restaurants. He posits the four key challenges of the franchise organization as being: Adding units Uniformity Local responsiveness Systemwide adaptation Most of the book addresses how the dual structure of companies with both company-owned and franchise restaurants assists with meeting these challenges. Bradach pays particular attention to the phenomenon of multi-unit franchisees. Franchise Organizations was exactly what I was looking for in terms of the breadth and depth of knowledge. Bradach writes well, without pretension or overly-academic jargon. The book is bound with three appendices which cover the literature on owning or franchising, the design of Bradach's research, and the role of the field visit. Recommended for other potential readers with an interest in the area.
Customer Review: Need better research design and deduction
This book was written by Dr.Bradach in 1997 but it stills a good reference today. The comment I have, however, would be the research design is too limited. The research was conducted based on "food resturant chain" but the deduction (including the book title) seems to cover every franchise business. Is it possible that the research results for restuarant business only? We don't know. The research validation of the author still questionable to me. The selected companies are too subjective, still. Several questions raised while I read the book about other franchise companies that the author didn't select. Although the author indicate three criteria (see research design of the book) to conduct the research, there is no mention to other companies that the author didn't choose. This book is quite comprehensive but it can be one of the best reference book if the author go more detail (and change the title) for food restuarant business and add more detail about his research design.


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