Information Technology in Franchising

Franchising is “a business opportunity by which the owner (producer or distributor) of a service or a trademarked product grants exclusive rights to an individual for the local distribution and/or sale of the service or product, and in return receives a payment or royalty and conformance to quality standards. The individual or business granting the business rights is called the franchisor, and the individual or business granted the right to operate in accordance with the chosen method to produce or sell the product or service is called the franchisee.” (Justis & Judd, 2002) Information technology (IT) has been widely used in today’s businesses. In his best seller, Business @ the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates (1999) wrote: “Information Technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without talking about the other.” Thus, to see how IT is used in franchising, one needs to know how franchising really works. The objective of this paper is to propose an attention-based IT infrastructure that can cultivate the relationship building between the franchisors and their franchisees which will ultimately lead to the success of the franchise organizations.