Franchising has long been a method by which organizations seek to expand and facilitate local market development. However, franchising as a growth strategy can often be hampered by lack of suitable franchisees. To mitigate this shortage, some franchisors have engaged in recruiting franchisees internally from the ranks of their employees in addition to the traditional approach of recruiting franchisees externally. Predominantly franchisees are individuals rather than corporations and thus purchasing a franchise should most commonly be characterized as a consumer acquisition. To explore the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk, and information search behaviors when purchasing a franchise qualitative interviews were conducted with franchisees from the restaurant industry. Half of these respondents were externally recruited having never worked for the franchisor and half were internally recruited having previously been employees of the franchisor. The external recruits expressed a strong desire to own their own business and engaged in extensive decision-making processes with significant information search when purchasing their franchises. Contrastingly, the internal recruits expressed a strong desire to be their own boss and engaged in limited, bordering on habitual decision-making processes with negligible information search when acquiring their franchises. The results reveal that differences in subjective knowledge and perceived risk appear to significantly impact the extent of information search between these two groups. A model of the relationship between subjective knowledge, perceived risk and information search in the purchasing of a franchise is developed that reconciles these findings. The findings also have practical implications for franchisors’ franchisee recruiting efforts which are integral to their capacity to develop local markets.

中文翻译：

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购买特许经营时的主观知识、感知风险和信息搜索：来自澳大利亚的比较探索

特许经营长期以来一直是组织寻求扩大和促进当地市场发展的一种方法。然而，特许经营作为一种增长战略往往会因缺乏合适的加盟商而受到阻碍。为了缓解这种短缺，除了传统的外部招聘加盟商的方法外，一些特许经营商还从员工队伍中内部招聘加盟商。主要的特许经营商是个人而不是公司，因此购买特许经营权最常见的特征是消费者收购。为了探讨购买特许经营权时主观知识、感知风险和信息搜索行为之间的关系，我们对餐饮业的加盟商进行了定性访谈。这些受访者中有一半是从外部招聘的，从未为特许人工作过，一半是内部招聘的，以前是特许人的员工。外部新员工表示强烈希望拥有自己的企业，并在购买特许经营权时参与了大量的决策过程和重要的信息搜索。相比之下，内部招聘人员表示强烈希望成为自己的老板，并在获得特许经营权时从事有限的、接近习惯的决策过程，信息搜索可忽略不计。结果表明，主观知识和感知风险的差异似乎显着影响了这两组之间的信息搜索范围。主观知识之间关系的模型，开发了购买特许经营权的感知风险和信息搜索，以协调这些发现。研究结果对特许人的加盟商招募工作也具有实际意义，这是他们开发当地市场能力不可或缺的一部分。