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Pioneering Asian Franchise Brands: Pho24 in Vietnam
Lorelle Frazer & Bill Merrilees a a a

Asia-Pacific Centre for Franchising Excellence, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia Version of record first published: 30 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Lorelle Frazer & Bill Merrilees (2012): Pioneering Asian Franchise Brands: …show more content…

Special attention was given to the brand founder and entrepreneur, Dr. Ly Qui Trung.

FRANCHISING BRAND MODELS Traditional
Most franchising models focus on the financial, management control, and marketing motivation for franchising, to which we will turn shortly. Very few of the models discuss the initial design of the franchising brand. The study can, therefore, contribute to the fledgling literature of entrepreneurial branding. Currently that literature emphasizes the strong role of the founder in shaping the brand (Abimbola, 2001; Doyle, 2003; Krake, 2005; Merrilees, 2007; Rode & Vallaster, 2005), which the current study endorses. The same entrepreneurial branding literature emphasizes the importance of corporate over product branding, again a sentiment echoed in the current study. The traditional franchising model, that is, one that is common in developed nations such as the United States or Australia, typically views

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franchising as an efficient method of distribution of goods and services due to its reliance on the human capital contributed by franchisee owner managers (Birkeland, 2002). Moreover, it is the ability of the franchisee and franchiser to specialize and contribute in different ways to the business relationship that provides a comparative advantage over alternative organizational structures (Blair & Lafontaine, 2005). The early literature