Supply chain management and food franchising: an empirical analysis

Abstract

Franchising is an important trend in business contracting, and it plays a special subject in Theory of Organizations and Supply Chain Management fields. The adequate coordination of productive chains is a relevant topic to food chains under business format franchising, faced with the requirement of standardization of products and services as well as of marketing strategies and operations and quality controls, regardless of geographical location of a given store. To better deal with these requirements, franchise chains should induce coordinative efforts through the entirety supply chain - understood as intra and inter transactions governed by the firm to allow that the value-chain could provide products and services to final consumers (Cox et al., 1995); (Lambert & Cooper, 2000). In that sense, this project aims to move forward in the study of the role of food franchise chains in the supply chain management in order to better control the franchised brand name value, the most relevant assets for franchising (Rubin, 1978: 228); (Minkler & Park, 1994: 410); (Bai & Tao, 2000:1). (AU)