FRANCHISING ALLIANCE AND LOCAL CONTENT DEVELOPMENTOF FOODS AND BEVERAGES MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY INRIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

Christopher, A. A.
Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Administration and Management, Rivers State
University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Hamilton, D. I.
Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Administration and Management, Rivers State
University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
and

Ogbonda, H. E.
Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Administration and Management, Rivers State
University, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

ABSTRACT
This study examined the relationship between franchising alliance and local content development of foods and beverages manufacturing industry. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design to obtained responses from the industry in Rivers State, Nigeria. The population of the study was (5) five foods and beverages manufacturing firms registered on the Nigeria Industrial Directory: Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) Directory of the Rivers State Branch of the Association that has operational base in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study used census sampling thus adopting the entire population with a total of fifty eight (58) strategic managers in the companies constituting the sampling elements. Data analysis, which was with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (version 26.0) was based on the Spearman’s Rank-order Correlation Coefficients which was used to test the study hypotheses. The empirical results showed that franchising alliance has a very strong positive and significant relationship with technological development as a measure to local content development. There is a very strong positive and significant relationship between franchising alliance and skill development as measure of local content development. The study thus, concluded that franchising strategy alliance has a positive and significant influence on local content development, thus; the dimensions and measures showed variations in the significance of relationships. Therefore, the study recommend that management of foods and beverages manufacturing firms should consider franchising alliance in terms of sub-contracting to helps international firms to expand their business overseas and enter into unfamiliar foreign markets.