Coles College of Business 2021-2022 Projects

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• 1. Leven School of Management, Entrepreneurship and Hospitality (Melih Madanoglu): Branding, Internationalization and Performance of Restaurant Chains

  2021-2022 First-Year Scholars: Saarthak Bhatia, History; Joel Smith, Business Administration

  • Project Description

    Franchising is a prominent business form, particularly in the restaurant industry where icons such as McDonald's and Subway have more than 30,000 outlets/stores across the globe. Franchising generates approximately 8 million jobs across more than 3,400 franchise brands in the United States (Franchise Direct, 2019). The success of franchising led to a steady stream of studies in several disciplines such as marketing, management, entrepreneurship and hospitality management. Past studies argue that consequences of franchising include financial performance (Combs et al., 2011). To shed some light into this issue, this project will use branding (number of brands), internationalization (number of countries) and proportion of franchised units/outlets as determinants of financial performance of restaurant franchising companies.

    The specific research questions can be stated as follows:

    1. Does higher geographic dispersion (having stores in higher number of US states) improve financial performance?
    2. Do multibrand restaurant chains perform better or worse than single-brand restaurant chains?
    3. Do multinational restaurant chains outperform domestic restaurant chains?
    4. Does a higher proportion of franchising units lead to better performance?

    To answer these questions, data for approximately 80 restaurant franchise brands will be obtained from SEC filings. Some data items are as follows: number of brands, number of U.S. States, number of units/locations, number of franchised units etc.  Next, statistical analyses will be conducted to answer research questions and results will be written up.

  • Student Outcomes
    • The First-Year Scholar will develop some knowledge of franchising business and the restaurant chains/companies.
    • The scholar will learn how to collect secondary firm-level (company) data from company documents and input it into Microsoft Excel to build a dataset.
    • The scholar will be exposed to data analysis and obtaining statistical output(s).
    • The scholar will learn how to prepare tables by including results from the statistical outputs.
    • The scholar will learn how to report these results in a research paper.
    • The scholar can present their papers at undergraduate conferences.
  • Student Weekly Duties
    1. First-year scholars will develop some knowledge of franchising business and the restaurant chains/companies.
    2. First-year scholars will learn how to collect secondary firm-level (company) data from company documents and input it into Microsoft Excel build a dataset.
    3. First-year scholars will be exposed to data analysis and obtaining statistical output(s).
    4. First-year scholars will learn how to prepare tables by including results from the statistical outputs.
    5. First-year scholars will learn how to report these results in a research paper.
    6. First-year scholars can present their papers at undergraduate conferences.
  • Contact
    Dr. Melih Madanoglu, mmadano1@kennesaw.edu