Purpose

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on international franchising. Franchising is a model for businesses to achieve scale with limited resources. International franchising is a mode of entry that allows firms to develop new markets with relatively little risk but also little control.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a systematic approach, the paper identifies all articles in the ISI Web of Science from 1970 to 2018 that includes the term international franchising (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 131 articles. This paper used HistCite software to analyze the bibliometric data.

Findings

Four major research clusters in the international franchising literature are identified. In addition, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, theories and methodologies from the 1970s through 2018. The paper presents the most influential articles, authors and journals.

Originality/value

From the analyzes, this study develops a conceptual framework of international franchising and suggest avenues for future research.

中文翻译：

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对国际特许经营的系统评价

目的

本文旨在提供关于国际特许经营的已经大量且不断增长的文献的文献计量学荟萃分析。特许经营是企业在资源有限的情况下实现规模扩张的一种模式。国际特许经营是一种进入方式，允许公司以相对较少的风险但也几乎没有控制权来开发新市场。

设计/方法/方法

本文采用系统的方法，确定了ISI Web of Science从1970年至2018年的所有文章，其中包括国际特许经营一词（标题，摘要或关键字），共找到131篇文章。本文使用HistCite软件分析文献计量数据。

发现

确定了国际特许经营文献中的四个主要研究领域。此外，本研究还显示了从1970年代到2018年有关主题，理论和方法的研究模式的变化。本文介绍了最具影响力的文章，作者和期刊。

创意/价值

通过分析，本研究建立了国际特许经营的概念框架，并为将来的研究提供了建议。