The world’s leading franchise researcher, Professor Rajiv Dant from the University of Oklahoma is spending two weeks with our Asia-Pacific Centre for Franchising Excellence.

While in Australia, he’s sharing his research and also helping coach early career researchers on how to get published.

Centre members, including myself, have also been working with Rajiv on a new research project exploring consumer acceptance of western fast food in emerging markets of India and China.

It’s a great opportunity for some of our members to build on their skills.

As Rajiv lives in America (the home of franchising), it’s been very interesting to hear his views of the Australian and Asia-Pacific franchise sectors.

In Rajiv’s view Australia’s becoming a very mature place for franchising and is catching up very fast on America, and he’s watching the growth of franchising across the Asia-Pacific.

In the United States, only 16 States have specific laws relating to franchising and there is no uniform code like there is in Australia, Malaysia and Vietnam**. Under the 16 States that have specific laws franchisors are required to disclose details through a UFOC (Uniform Franchising Offering Circular), which is recorded by that State government. There is no authentic data available at the federal level.

The lack of franchising data in the United States is one of Rajiv’s pet concerns. (Although this was not always the case — there used to be franchising census data collected by the Government in the 1980s).

Rajivi says he’s embarrassed that the United States is the home of franchising yet they don’t have any reliable data on the sector.

There is the annual Bond’s Guide which started in 1993 and reports on a voluntary survey, but only about 1000 systems respond.

The only other data available on the United States franchise sector is an annual feature in the Entrepreneurship Magazine which profiles the top 500 systems, providing a small amount of information on each. They are the only two publicly available sources.

Some research done on UFOCs in the 16 states where they are recorded but there is nothing authentic at Federal level.

The Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs; Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy; and Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation Dr Craig Emerson MP is currently seeking further consultation on eight of the eleven recent Australian Federal Franchise Inquiry recommendations. One of these concerns the collection of franchise data by the Australia Bureau of Statistics. It will be interesting to see the Minister’s decision, which is due out around the start of August. What are your thoughts?