Subtle Differences Between Women and Men in Ranking Desired Franchise Characteristics
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
July 22, 2026 – In over six years of surveying individuals researching franchises, we have seen consistency in the rankings of most important characteristics, and shifts associated with tectonic events like the outbreak of covid on attitudes about pandemic resilience, remote work and work flexibility.
In October 2025, we first looked for differences between male and female respondents, and found them to be subtle, with the greatest differences in the area of work flexibility. In our recent surveys, those differences were less pronounced.
In the FranchiseInsights.com Small Business Startup Sentiment Index™, respondents are asked to rank nine franchise characteristics in order of importance to their ultimate selection, along with a “not important to me” option for each. The data presented above are weighted averages of the responses ranked by individual respondents on a one-to-nine scale..
For the second time, we look at the results by self-reported gender to discover any differences which might inform both the franchise development sales process and targeted recruitment.
In analyzing three months of surveys by gender, from March to May 2026, there are two outstanding observations.
First, as before, it is remarkable how little difference there is between males and female respondents on the ranking of characteristics they find most attractive in a franchise. “Low cost of entry” and “higher earnings potential” have consistently been ranked most important by individuals seeking business ownership regardless of gender. For the first time, “flexibility of work schedule” rose to rank second in our recent review of rankings overall.
Women and men are remarkably similar in their rankings of desired characteristics, and most different in their rankings of potential threats to success like the pandemic and artificial intelligence.
But this time women and men were much closer in ranking the importance of “work schedule flexibility” and “ability to work from home” as can be seen in the below chart.
While “pandemic resilience” and “not likely threatened by AI” were the lowest-ranked considerations overall, they showed the greatest differences between women and men. Female respondents were more concerned about how a franchise might survive a pandemic (or perhaps the related work stoppages). On the other hand, males were more concerned about how AI might impact their choice of business.
The chart below shows the categories with the greatest weighted-average differences between the sexes. Positive numbers mean women ranked the characteristic higher.
“Pandemic resilience” showed the greatest positive difference (ranked higher by women), while “higher earnings potential” had the second greatest difference, with women ranking it higher. Women were slightly more concerned with “well-known brand” and “ability to work from home”, while men ranked “low cost of entry” higher.
The greatest difference was in the perceived threat of AI to a given franchise, with men showing greater concern. We don’t know why.
Below we see the percentages by gender for whom each characteristic is not important at all. This helps explain the gender differences in rankings of “well-known brand” and “ability to work from home,” given that about twenty percent of either gender deemed them “not important.”
On the other hand, for the general population, attributes like “extensive training and support” and ‘systems and technology platform” are important enough to be ranked by about 87% to 93% of respondents, respectively, despite their fifth and sixth rankings overall.
FranchiseInsights.com compiles the monthly Small Business Startup Sentiment Index™ (SSI) of individuals who have recently inquired about businesses for sale. Data for this analysis was from the period March to May 2026.
Franchise Ventures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
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Published on Tuesday, July 14th, 2026.