Some more comments on the Franchise Recruiters Ltd. survey.
***If you read my blog for the first time I need to notify that it’s the second part of my comments for the Franchise Recruiters Ltd. survey. If you are interested in the beginning check the post before the previous.
So the next tendency in franchise business pointed by respondents (top 100 franchise leaders) is that franchise chains will have to increase the range of their goods and services. Some will even decide to combine goods and services from different franchise systems. They will fuse the channels and attract new buyers saving their time. They will operate under the slogan: “You can get everything in one place”. As an example they mentioned stores that sell ice cream and fresh flowers, coffee and offer top selling music CD’s, and video rental brands, cell phones and accessories.
As for me I like that idea from both points of view. As a consumer I prefer to park my car once and to do all the shopping, hairstyle, and so on at once. If to speak about business benefits the main advantage is that they can choose the best goods, services, technologies and practices from every franchise idea and decrease costs. Economists call this economy of scale (the situation when a company’s average costs decrease while company grows).
The next feature of modern franchise business according to the concerned survey is so-called “self-service” opportunity. The central place is given to kiosk technology which becomes ubiquitous for retailing products, packaged food, hotel reservations, and franchisor branded gift cash cards. It’s rather convenient for both sides. Consumers can get their favorite branded chocolate or order a ticket near parking lots, outside and inside big stores, gas stations, and malls. And certainly through the Internet… Franchisor can send his/her product to any part of the country. This strategy also saves salary costs as kiosk doesn’t need to be trained, to get social security, and can work 24 hours 7 days and will never be late because “of terrible headache on Monday”… The only disadvantage of kiosk technology as I think is its inability to operate as a human. The artificial intelligence is too expensive today. But I will not be surprised to see a chocolate and drinks kiosk that will have its own opinion and advice me what to buy and how to get to the point of destination better. 
OK… too much of a good thing is good for nothing. More tendencies you will see in the next post.