Franchise
FRANCHISE
A franchise is the business resulting when permission or authorization is given to someone to sell or distribute a company's products in a given location. Sometimes the geographic territory itself is called a franchise. A franchisee is a person who operates under such authorization.
Franchises are extremely common in the economy of the latter-half of the twentieth century. Most fast-food restaurants, retail shops, and other common businesses operate as franchises. Typically, the parent company that authorizes the franchise also develops the concept, designs the store, markets the product nationally, and trains the local franchisee, all in exchange for a fee and perhaps a percentage of profits. The parent company may also insist that certain standards of product quality be met, and that employee uniforms and the like be similar to those in the company's other franchises. In the largest such companies, a single parent corporation operates through thousands of franchise outlets.
Critics complain that franchises lead to a loss of distinctive regional identities because all businesses tend to look the same all over the country. Defenders, however, contend that society benefits because a parent company can demand a level of quality higher than might be found in most small, local operations.