US-Based Fast Food Restaurants: Factors Influencing International Expansion of Franchise Systems

Studies of international franchising are scant, but growing, and can be divided into two main streams of research: those focused on environmental predictors of internationalization and those focused on strategic, firm level characteristics. Belonging to the latter category, this study empirically examines a set of firm level attributes as predictors of the decision-making on whether or not firms seek international expansion. Using longitudinal data from Bonds’ Franchise Guide 2001-2008, we draw upon a sample of U.S. based fast food franchise systems for testing our hypotheses. Specifically, our database is comprised of 1058 observations for 158 chains and we estimate a semi-parametric logis…