1. Franchising is widely used in the casual dining and fast food industry. yet Starbucks is quite successful with a large number of company-owned stores. In 2019 Starbucks had more than 8,500 company-owned stores in the United States. How do you oxplain this difference? is Starbucks bucking the trend of other food-service stores, or is something else going on? 2. Nike is a large and successhul firm in the design of athlefic shoes. It could easily decide to forward-integrate and manufacture the shoes it designs. Thus, the firm has a credible threat over its current outsourced manufacturers. If Nike has no intention of actually entering the manuflacturing arena, is it ethical for the Nike supply chain management to bring up this credible threat during annual pricing negotiations? What are some reasons Nike may want to consider such a vertical integration more seriously? 3. The chapter notes that some firms choose to outsource their human resource management systems. If a firm has a core value of respecting its employees and rewarding top performance with training. raises, and promotions, does outsourcing HR management show a lack of commitment by the firm