Microfranchising: nový nástroj rozvojové pomoci

This paper introduces the topic of microfranchising as a new tool of development aid. Microferanchising should be more effective and impactful on lives of individuals than traditional and official development aid of international and governmental institutions which is often critised for its low efficiency over the last fifty years of their existence. The paper focuses on microfranchising definition, missions, features and geographical presence of existing microfranchising concepts. It reflects current status and compiles available information sources and literature dedicated to microfranchising. The available literature and its authors offer the model of microfranchising as one of the supportive solutions based on self-reliance and entrepreneurship. The article provides a summary of findings from author’s research conducted among seventy sample cases of existing microfranchising concepts in the developing world. There are several objectives that this paper shall fulfill. The first objective is to create and publish the very first original Czech written source of information introducing the concept of microfranchising. There has been nothing written and published before and therefore mainly nearly not even known about microfranchising in the Czech Republic. Therefore, and this is the second objective, it should create an informative summary of microfranchising as a new development tool, introduce its definition, features, missions and geographical presence to prove evidence of its existence in the developing world. The third objective is to prove the presumption of the author that the awareness of the topic of microfranchising in the Czech society would be very low. The awareness of microfranchising was studied in an empirical research, which was a survey conducted by the author in autumn 2012 on a sample of 356 Czech respondents. This survey proved extremely low awareness, so the assumption of correlation between lack of information available and knowledge in the society about this topic was confirmed. Therefore this paper, being a first Czech original source should be of a relevant value.