Analysis of efficiency of own and franchised units in the Spanish franchise system

In this work, we try to answer a key question: what are the more efficient units in franchising: owned or franchised? The literature on this specific field is very limited. To compare the efficiency of owned and franchised units we use the following variables: average sales per unit, average sales per employee and the average number of employees per unit for owned and franchised establishments. The analyses are carried out using the population of franchise chains, a database with the 1232 franchise chains existing in Spain at the end of 2015 has been created for this purpose. The results show the higher efficiency of owned regarding franchised units.