The service industry in the developed world established itself long before it entered the developing economies. Services marketing, as compared to goods marketing, is relatively a young field, though expanding with a jet speed in the developing countries including India. Different models of business are eyeing the growing Indian market. Franchising is one of the popular models of business looked as a win-win model by both the business partners. Franchising is a great way of expanding the proven business by leveraging the resources and the enterprise of potential franchisees. In today's competitive world, manufacturers are luring the customers to buy the products by offering value added services. A relatively new phenomenon, `Service Franchise' has thus become an important tool for all brands to woo the customers. Service franchise is a pattern where the franchisor provides the framework for professional services, which are provided by the franchisee to the customers. Several sectors of the economyconsumer durables, health and beauty care, retailing, education and many more are increasingly opting for `Service Franchise Model' to expand their business territories. The paper presents an overview of `Franchising' as a business model in general and `Service Franchise model' in particular with reference to India and aims to cover the problems and prospects of `the Service franchise' sector in India with a few illustrations.
Marketing
in the 19th and 20th centuries focused
on selling agricultural goods and later expanded to include
manufactured goods. Services were not seen as the products
to be marketed as such, but were viewed as support and aid
factors to promotion and distribution. Four paradigms of
services marketing-that is intangibility, heterogeneity,
inseparability and perishability-which differentiated services
from goods, existed till the recent past. Christopher Lovelock,
professor at Yale University, US, in his article published
in the Journal of Service Research, proposed an unconventional
paradigm to differentiate services from goods on the basis
of co-ownership, where services take the form of rentals
or momentary possessions and access rather than ownership.
This paradigm covers the activity `franchising' which does
not involve the transfer of ownership, but provides a scope
for resource sharing between two parties. |
