SUMMARY
Franchising has gained popularity over the last decades. From a franchisor point of view, expanding a franchise network depends on several key aspects, one of which is the franchisee candidate recruitment and appropriate selection. This paper develops a theoretical franchisee selection model, which is based on an extensive international literature review and then discussed with 33 German-speaking franchise experts, in order to result in an improved and practically oriented model. The findings of this research are numerous and include the closely oriented opinion between academics around the world and interviewed franchise experts in Germany and Austria. Qualitative interviews give an insight in the many facets necessary to consider when evaluating a franchisee candidate. Nevertheless, the complexity of the topic limits the validity of the analysis made in this single paper.