Abstract:
To assess the critical success factors for franchising a pharmacy business. This thesis is divided into two sections - the former is to determine the critical success factors of the franchise pharmacy industry and the latter is to develop a franchising concept. The first stage of this thesis methodology is to collect information from journals, research reports, human expert interview and questionnaires in order to analyze competition, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the franchise pharmacy industry by means of Porter’s Five Forces Analysis and SWOT Analysis. Then, the obtained result was analyzed by using TOWS Matrix to determine strategic objectives and key success factors of the industry, respectively. The key success factors were weighted in order to determine the critical success factors. The final result of this study indicated that there were five critical success factors of the franchise pharmacy industry such as chain store, product and service, human resource, location, and information. The identified critical success factors were used to develop a franchising concept that consisted of vision, mission, business objectives, and action plan. Moreover, the researcher developed a case study of franchising of Udom Pharmacy that included a business format franchising concept and a model of franchise management. The case study included business concept, marketing mix, investment feasibility study, a model of organization management, operations management and quality management of Udom Pharmacy to be used as a guideline for franchisors or entrepreneurs who interest in franchising a pharmacy business or other businesses.
