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In service industry, companies have routinely hundreds of sites where their services are created. These geographically dispersed chains have to decide whether to sell their services to consumer themselves or via independent retailer. When a company performs the sales function internally, it owns the physical facilities and operates them by hiring employee managed through a traditional hierarchical structure. When a company does not perform the sales function internally but wants exclusive retailers, it usually contracts with a franchisee that uses the chains trademark and receive the unit’s profit (minus the royalty payment) as he invest capital in the unit and agrees to adhere to certain operating standards

Once the initial constraint of financial resources, human resource and information resource availability are relatively overcome, the attractiveness of franchising is greatly diminished. Then franchisor may resort to ownership redirection. In the plural form chains franchised units and company owned units exist in the same time and the same place in term of performance and efficiency (Dant, Rajiv P. and Patrick J. Kaufmann, 2003). The first explanation concerning the use of mix of franchised units and company owned units in a chain are limited to specific situation. The franchise system is rather implemented for outlets located far from the company headquarters. Company owned units are kept for nearby. In France, other reason dealing with regulation, it is compulsory to open some company owned outlets before developing the chain through a franchise system. It is shown that plural form chains have significantly higher average efficiency score than franchised or company ownership. Plural form chains perform better than franchised or company ownership. Franchised and company own units complement each other (Botti, Laurent., Walter Briec., Gerard Cliquet, 2007).

The advantages of plural form chains are adding new units. The franchisor shows his/her know how through the company owned units, and thus attract new franchisee, and also franchisee can create his/her own units. There is, as well, a socialization process in the sense that franchisor personnel can become a source for hiring new franchisees. Moreover, a mutual learning process also exists which facilitates the generation, test, selection and implementation of new ideas, maintaining the concept uniformity, reacting locally to threats or opportunities, adapting the concept to changes. The process of plural form chains enable organization to escape their natural tendency to become inflexible over time by creating a built in creative tension between parts that keep the organization receptive to new influences, yet in control (Perrigot, Rozenn., Gerard Cliquet., Isabelle Piot-Lepetit, 2008).

The finding of empirical analysis that indicate plural form chains perform better than franchised chains and partly better than company owned chains have implications on managerial practices of franchising entrepreneurs. The franchisor has to well manage the percentage of franchised and company owned units during the chain development since the coexistence of both contributes to enhance the chain efficiency. Efficiency has been considered in terms of input minimization. Company owned unit can be used, for regional training and manager, as guide for the franchisee. Training costs are then minimized for the franchisor. Company owned unit also provides the franchisor with direct income whereas franchised units offer only additional revenues (entry fees and royalties). Plural form chains give a chance for real or prospective franchisees to be more efficient. They will benefit from economies of scale, good managerial practices, brand name recognition, daily know how. Input economies can be realized in advertising or training and paying high royalties can be justified by a higher performance