(FS1) Franchising, Branding, and the Franchisor for You

The International Franchise Association (IFA) hasn’t been publishing numbers of franchise success for years. It’s easy to falsify number and statistics specifically. You should be wary of any business or franchisor who swears by numbers or claims success based on statistics.

 

franchisingWhat is a Brand and What Does it Do in Franchising?

It’s key that franchisees for sale know this: brand equals the experience a consumer expects to get. Brand equals a company’s reputation.

 

To understand the power of brand, think of something specific like Samsung brand electronics. Immediately the name will say something to you. Maybe you have always used Samsung because they are dependable and high quality or perhaps you never want to use any Samsung device again because of a poor experience with faulty equipment. The brand is what consumers will recognize and associate directly with good or bad attributes. The brand is what will help consumers decide whether or not to shop at a specific location or even to purchase a specific item. Without a relationship to the owner of a specific franchise, consumers are more likely to imagine they’re shopping at a chain rather than a franchise. Think of the difference if you were to shop at a Best Buy that you didn’t know vs. a Best Buy that was owned and operated by a close friend. That would change the whole dynamic of the store and brand and how you think about it.

 

What do Franchisors Add to the Franchising Relationship?

Franchisors have spent their time, money, and energy creating a name for themselves. They’ve built relationships with the public in order to set up the expectations for service when they walk through the door. A good brand will always be able to communicate a clear and concise message to its consumers. This message will be communicated through the customer service, the product quality, the commercials, and the experience the customer specifically had with any of these things, including other customers in your store.

 

Thinking of the way McDonald’s tries to instill warmth and family friendliness through their commercials, this is what you are paying for as a franchisee: the already established relationship that a franchise has with its consumers. With a well-known brand, you will say it and people will already have an experience, whether you’ve opened your store or not. They will have an opinion of you and decide whether to shop with you right then and there.

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What’s more incredible is to remember that at one point, ever franchise in existence was a simple small-town store. These places that we now know as franchises in the United States and around the world had been so good at communicating with their consumers and provided experiences that gave them the ability to grow. It is these models that give small business starters hope, however it can also give them hardship as small, independent business owners may offer the best service in town, but will have far more limited resources when it comes to communication and brand recognition. While a small shop might offer greater service than a national brand, the small shop will not have the brand recognition or the advertising that a big chain will have and it will seem like an uphill battle during a downpour to just gain footing in the market. This is where independent business-ownership can be much harder to succeed in than franchising.

Read More in From Franchise Series 1:

 

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