Often taken as the demise of American identity local and regional, franchises also represent an economic negotiation of individual aspirations and cultural expectations.

Behind McDonald’s, Holiday Inn motel rooms, many gas stations, camera stores, florists and weight-loss centers there is both a tested plan and an individual entrepreneur striving for success while meeting the franchiser’s (and customers’) demands for uniformity.

Franchises offer dreams of independence and wealth, although they also may lock owners and families into work as self-exploitative and struggling momand-pop stores.

Franchising involves a “parent” company which negotiates an agreement with an individual owner to market products and services, as well as reputation. This entails both an initial fee (and establishment costs) and an ongoing relationship through royalties.

Franchising also entails negotiation not only of appropriate buyers, but also of sites, localizations and business relations, which may include more direct co-ownership.

Early franchise arrangements in place by the 1920s included automobile dealerships, soft-drink bottlers and service stations, which accounted for 75 percent of franchise income in the 1990s. These include franchise empires of chains within chains. In the postwar period, new opportunities in fast food and motels, responding to new lives built around cars, highways and suburbia, spurred renewed interest in franchises. Franchises soon turned to cities, smaller towns and increasing diversity within shopping centers and malls, while Century 21, founded in 1972, has revolutionized real-estate sales through interconnected offices nationwide.

Franchise sales in 1999 reached 11,000 billion, and franchises employed 8 million people—as many as the automobile industry Despite the commitments under which owners operate, however, their failure rate is significantly lower than the failure rate for independent businesses (8 percent for franchises in their first five years as opposed to 77 percent for independent businesses).

Among the most common franchises encountered by Americans are many fast-food services, convenience stores, home-care stores, motels, real estate, clothing, athletic wear, computers and travel. Franchises cater to varying class demands, although issues of racial opportunity in ownership as well as service have erupted as public issues, most notably with the food chain Denny’s. This model has also allowed for both the extension of American forms and products abroad and imitation by other chains in Europe, Asia and Latin America.