Comparing and contrasting between the various external growth strategies such as mergers and

acquisitions, JV ,strategic alliance and franchise 

External growth strategies enable the growth of a company using external

resources and capabilities rather than from internal business activities. This
strategy results in an increase in sales through various practices such as
purchase of other companies or building a business relationship with them etc.
A company can use external growth strategies to achieve a number of different
objectives, such to obtain access to new markets to Increase their market
power and share to access new technology to diversify a product or service
and to increase the efficiency of business operations

Some of the most common forms of external growth are mergers and
acquisitions , joint venture , strategic alliance and franchise. To compare
between them we must first look at what each of them mean. Mergers and
acquisitions are a strategic way for a business to expand their growth by either
buying over a company or forming an alliance with them .They refer to
transactions between entities that involve a complete exchange of ownership,
it can also be referred to as a financial transaction where in two companies
become one.While we look at strategic alliance we can see that this is again a
strategy for external growth , a strategic alliance is usually much easier to
execute and do not need extreme commitment from involved partners.
Strategic alliances do not require a complete transfer of ownership between
the companies. Instead, organisations pool their assets together for a limited
time in order to achieve predetermined objectives while staying autonomous
i.e having their own power.There are two types of strategic alliances: equity
and non-equity alliances. When two or more separate companies join forces to
form an equity alliance, they form a new company that is jointly owned by all
of the partners. A joint venture is the most prevalent type of equity
collaboration. Non-equity alliances, on the other hand, are formed through
contracts. Coming to the last external growth strategy , Franchise, can be
referred to as a joint venture between the franchisee and the franchisor ,
franchisees also have access to a franchisor's proprietary business expertise,
methods, and trademarks, allowing them to sell a product or service under
the franchisor's brand. The franchisee normally pays the franchisor an initial
start-up cost as well as annual licencing fees and also pays for the rent in
exchange for obtaining a franchise.Now if we take an overview of the
contrasts between the external growth strategies we can see that the main
difference between M&A and strategic alliance is that Alliance is an approach
in which two or more companies agree to pool their resources together to
form a combined force in the marketplace. Unlike a merger, an alliance does
not involve the emergence of a new combined entity. And we can also see that
A franchise is a business arrangement in which one party signs a contract with
a firm to sell products or services using the firm's name and image. A joint
venture Is an agreement between two parties to work together for mutual
profit, typically by bringing a new product or service to a market. In mergers
and aquations it self we can see some differences and they are that
A merger occurs when two separate entities combine forces and usually the
two entities are somewhat equal in terms of size and operations of scale , to
create a new, joint organization. Meanwhile, an acquisition refers to
the takeover of one entity by another and we can say that one of the two
companies hold a higher power and decision making abil ity.

Thus we can see the clear differences as well as the similarities between
the different external growth strategies through this answer.