Date of Graduation

7-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Marketing

Advisor/Mentor

Robert Stassen

Committee Member

Ronn J. Smith

Second Committee Member

Jingping Gu

Third Committee Member

Dinesh K. Gauri

Keywords

spatial market coverage, market demand, franchisee chains, location, brands

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationships between market coverage, franchise ownership, and franchise outlet survival rate.

In the first essay, I develop a spatial market coverage measure by integrating geocodes of outlets across five fast-food franchise systems. This spatial market coverage builds upon one navigation system algorithm by utilizing geographic coordinates. This measure can be applied by entrepreneurs to examine their geographic coverage and address issues of market oversaturation and lack of coverage.

In the second essay, I extend the spatial market coverage and examine how this spatial market coverage and franchise ownerships affect franchise outlet survival rate, which has not been thoroughly studied. I find that: 1) different franchise owners have substantial differences in unit survival rate; 2) reasonable control of space market coverage is also critical to the outlet survival.

Collectively, my dissertation creates a spatial market coverage that has a high explanatory power to illuminate the relationship between corporate ownership and unit survival. The spatial market coverage provides a new approach to exam a franchise system or a retailer’s geographical distribution or coverage. These two studies provide guidance for entrepreneurs to expand the market and improve the outlet's survival rate by utilizing different ownerships.

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