Modern Trends in the Development of Franchising as a Business Strategy

The article is devoted to the study of features of franchising as a strategy of business development, which allows to form resource, technological, innovative, partner competitive advantages and take a stable competitive position in the market and, as the experience of developed countries shows, is a real mechanism for successful development of small business in the long term. The economic essence of the classical model of franchising and the socioeconomic conditions that determined its evolution are disclosed: changes in consumer behavior; strengthening customization and individualization trends; change in franchisee’s expectations of entrepreneurial initiative; rapid development of information and communication technologies; increase in franchisors’ costs for franchisee support; the economic crisis, which contributes to the growing popularity of budget conceptions; growing uncertainty of the external environment. Based on the systematization of the parameters of differences (the fact of brand transfer, features of the regulation of key processes, the possibility of registration of joint ownership of the franchise, standardization of external elements and assortment, as well as the specifics of the process of innovation transfer) alternative models of franchising are characterized: customized franchising of the business format, quasi-franchising and branchising. Knowledge of modern trends in the organization of entrepreneurial activity on the basis of franchising will allow entrepreneurs to choose for business the direction that is in demand at a particular point in time in a certain territory for a specific segment of consumers.