While McDonald’s cannot export its product, it can choose among different modes of
operation in each market, some of which involve a higher degree of commitment of resources
than others. In particular, it can open a subsidiary that franchises directly, or enter into a joint
venture with a local partner, or establish a master franchising arrangement whereby the master
franchisee owns and operates all the outlets in his or her territory or finds franchisees to do the
same. While the level of investment that McDonald’s commits to these markets differs across
these different governance modes, in all cases McDonald’s exerts significant control over the
number of outlets and the growth in the number of outlets in each market. Consequently, in what
follows, we assume that it internalizes the cost of expansion to a large extent – though potentially
to varying degree depending on governance within each market - and that it gets to set the
expansion path within as well as across all markets.4
While internationalization theory implies that familiarity will be the driving factor in
determining where McDonald’s will expand abroad, a prediction we address empirically below