The social and economic contribution of franchising to many Western economies is widely reported (Alon, 2004). Franchising is a business model in which a franchisee is granted the right to engage in offering, selling, or distributing goods or services under a marketing system that has been designed by the franchisor (Justis and Judd, 2004). The franchisor permits the franchisee to use the franchisor’s trade name and advertising (Mendelsohn, 2004). The Australian franchising sector has achieved consistent growth since the 1980s, with franchising activity currently contributing approximately (12 percent) of the country’s gross domestic product (Frazer et al., 2008). However, research has revealed that franchising systems may be unable to expand at the rate they desire owing to difficulties in obtaining franchisee finance and a shortage of suitable franchisee applicants (Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2009; Frazer et al., 2008). There are currently 56,200 business format franchised units operating in Australia (Frazer et al., 2008), accounting for approximately (5 percent) of all small business in Australia (ABS, 2009). Though this appears to suggest that franchising has the potential to expand, prior research has shown that the lack of available suitable franchisee candidates may constrain system growth and sector expansion (Frazer et al., 2008). Previous research shows that this is not a recent phenomenon (Knight, 1986; McGuire, 1971) and may be reliant upon how franchisors classify attributes that are desirable in potential incumbent franchisees (Frazer and McCosker, 1999; Hedricks and Kiefer, 2005; Michael, 2003). However, there appears to be a gap in our current understanding of how these impediments to franchise growth may be overcome. In addition to acquiring valuable insights into current recruitment practice, the primary purpose of this research is to sustain informed decision-making in the future through a study of the fundamental and under-researched question of how franchisors may overcome the shortage of suitable franchisees. On this basis, a thorough enquiry into possible solutions to the problem associated with a shortage of suitable franchisees is warranted. Hence, the following research questions are posed. Research question 1: “What are desirable franchisee attributes?” Research question 2: “How can franchisors overcome the perceived shortage of suitable franchisees”? This research focuses on theory development by integrating known concepts with new research and emerging marketing techniques that may be applied to this problem.