Franchise Direct carries out an annual online survey, seeking to gain a greater understanding of the aspirations and processes of franchisees. These surveys have already proved to be a great success on FranchiseAsia.com and FranchiseDirect.co.uk. Our goal with the 2017 survey on FranchiseDirect.co.za was that it would provide us with an invaluable insight into the mindset of potential franchisees. Using a detailed survey with a wide variety of questions and suggested answers, we asked franchisees about their educational background, how they plan to fund their investment in a franchise, their online habits and where they source their information about franchises. Surveys such as this allow us to understand the motivation behind franchisee engagement and learn how to improve our services to encourage and develop this engagement.
The Survey was created and conducted through Survey Monkey, and potential franchisees were made aware of it through Franchise Direct ZA’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as our weekly newsletter (don’t forget to sign up to our free newsletter at the bottom of the page). The response was very positive and 93 people participated in the survey. The survey contained 28 questions and was divided into five sections, as we wanted to discern our respondents’ demographic, their business experience, their internet and social media habits, the extent of their interest in franchising and how they plan to finance a franchise. The anonymous responses were thoroughly analysed to find out how our services can successfully connect visitors to our website with the franchise opportunities that best suit their specifications. The graphs below give a visual representation of the results of our survey. How would you have answered?
Franchisee Demographics
These introductory questions enabled us to have a sense of the type of person who visits our website, based on gender, age, place of residence, level of education and employment status. We learned that the average potential franchisee is male, aged between 36 and 45, lives in South Africa, holds a National Senior Certificate and is currently employed.
Business Experience
It is important to us to understand our users’ background. The main sources of business information for potential franchisees were revealed to be websites, with social media and newspapers proving to be popular also. Over half of those who participated in our survey have already operated their own business and have experience in management, a huge advantage when deciding to invest in a franchise.
Internet and Social Media Use
Surfing the web has become part of most people’s daily routine. We discovered that the majority of our website users spend two to three hours online each day and use a phone or computer to browse the web. The most popular form of social media proved to be Facebook, with LinkedIn a close second. Potential franchisees obtain their business information directly from the website in question, rather than visiting their social media pages.
Interest in Franchising
Franchising is an attractive business opportunity and affords franchisees a level of job flexibility. It is therefore no surprise that the majority of respondents acknowledged that their primary interest in franchising is because they wish to be their own boss. Most of the survey’s participants have been considering franchising for three to four years. Over half of our survey’s participants admitted that they don’t know a lot about the franchise application process. Our website has many resources that can be useful to potential franchisees, such as blog posts, reports and articles about the franchising process. Click here to access our Information Centre.
Financials
Almost two-thirds of respondents aim to invest below R1,000,000 to start a franchise, while one-fifth admitted that their budget had not been determined yet. Over half of those who took our survey plan to finance their franchise through personal savings or retirement fund. For reasons such as these, it is important to Franchise Direct that we advertise a wide range of franchise opportunities, catering to a variety of budgets, and we are happy to offer many franchises under R1,000,000 (click here to see more).
