Choice of Being Self-Employed and Franchising

Abstract

Our economy consists of many different sizes of businesses that range from big corporates to small individually owned ventures. An individual who chooses to work for himself has to deal with a lot of choices. A major choice to make here is whether he wants to start his venture from scratch or wants to collaborate with a player who is already in the market and probably has set processes which minimises the risk taken, i.e., buy a franchise. This paper aims to study the choice of self-employment and getting deeper into it, the choice of franchising by a business owner and what are the factors that affect these choices. The study is conducted in the form of a questionnaire to university students who aim to be budding entrepreneurs and will reveal how much each of these factors would affect their choice. Support was found in favour of personal benefits and parental self-employment history being linked to an individual’s choice of self-employment. Also lack of experience in a particular sector and involvement in another business have been linked to a person choosing franchising over an independent business and are supported by result of analysis.