Franchising, broadly speaking, is a means of running a commercial operation using some or all aspects of another business, including its name, brand and products.
In the past this has included licensing agreements, where you have the rights to sell a particular product in a particular market, distribution deals, which work on a similar basis, or some sort of agency agreement – where you are running a part of a larger business.
More recently, however, franchising has come to mean the granting of a licence to trade under the same name as the parent company and to use all or many of the aspects that made that business succeed to enable your own venture to get off the ground.
Some of the most successful businesses in the world, such as Domino’s Pizza and McDonald’s restaurants, operate on a franchised basis.