Franchise Branding in the Fast-Food Sector: Insights from the USA and France

Franchisors have to not only promote their products and services to their end-customers, but also their business concepts and their franchise opportunities to franchisee candidates. In this paper, we seek to better understand the values and attributes of the system that franchisors communicate to potential franchisees and to determine whether this differs in different cultural contexts where franchisees may hold different values. The aim of this paper is therefore to (1) identify the key brand benefits that franchisors communicate to potential franchisees and (2) explore whether there are differences between franchise chains in different cultural contexts—in this case, the USA and France. Our empirical study is based on an examination of franchise recruitment advertising used by fast-food franchisors in franchise directories. Our sample includes 690 franchise chains operating in the fast-food industry, both in the USA (297 chains) and France (393 chains). Our findings show that, in both countries, franchisors try to emphasize the benefits of the business concept itself—through descriptions of their product offer and the restaurants' atmosphere—as well as demonstrate the benefits of their franchise system. We further find differences in some of the key brand benefits communicated depending on the cultural context.