Resumo

Entry into the international market has been a topic widely examined in the literature. Since the 2000s, there has been a growing number of studies focused on the internationalization of franchise chains from multiple perspectives due to their prominent role in the international economy, especially American franchise chains. On the other hand, there are few studies on the behavior of franchise chains in emerging countries causing a limitation in the understanding of the process of internationalization of franchises chains from other markets in the world

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the institutional environment of the destination country can impact the selection of countries for the international expansion of franchise chains from emerging and developed countries. We seek to identify institutional particularities between the chains from emerging and developed countries.

The theoretical framework is supported by institutional theory, since it has been used to understand formal and informal institutions, their impacts on international business and the institutional particularities of the business model constituted by franchise chains. Thus, a study addresses the impact of legal, political, economic and financial systems on the internationalization behavior of franchise chains.

The research was quantitative. The sample used consists of 427 franchise chains from six countries, three developed and three emerging. The method used was logistic regression, in which the binary dependent variable was represented by the classification of the country of origin of the franchise chain, emerging or developed, and the independent variables corresponded to the institutional variables that reflected the political, legal, economic and financial systems of the destination country.

The results reveal that companies tend to look for markets that are institutionally similar to their country of origin in terms of the political, economic and financial spheres in order to internationalize.

The results reinforce previous studies that indicate that companies tend to seek institutional markets similar to their country of origin to internationalize. However, this result was not confirmed in relation to the judicial system.

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