THE DISSEMINATION OF FRANCHISING ALL OVER THE WORLD: AN ATTEMPT TO ASSESS THE SCALE OF THE PHENOMENON

Nowadays, franchising is one of the fastest developing forms of business in the world. It is used in economic processes on all the inhabited continents of the Earth. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to assess the scale of this phenomenon. Assessment of the volume of franchising all over the world is made difficult mostly by the fact that none of the official international statistic institutions gathers data as regards the frequency of entering into franchising agreements. Information on the number of businesses in a given country or on a given continent is available, but enterprises operating on the basis of franchising agreements are not educed from them. The purpose of the article is to specify the directions and scale of expansion of franchising all over the world. To do it, franchising related information was used, possessed by organizations which promote the idea of franchising in various countries. For this purpose, a few dozen of franchising associations were identified, representing 6 continents; each of these associations represents the franchising market of one country. As a result of direct interviews via e-mail or telephone, it was possible to obtain the basic data characterizing franchising markets of more than 70 countries. The data obtained concern, among others, such aspects as the number of franchising networks and establishments, as well as employment and turnover generated by franchising.