Marketing Principles and Practice

This report assesses the marketing efforts of KFC, an American fast food restaurant chain, and discusses the different marketing management orientations available to them. It explores the importance of marketing for the productivity and profitability of KFC in the hospitality industry.

Marketing Principles and
Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is the strategic business process through which a business organisation
effectively promotes and advertises its goods and products to the consumers in the public in
order to increase their interests in the organisation’s products in the market (de Sabando and
et.al., 2018). This report assesses the marketing efforts of KFC, an American fast food restaurant
chain that operates in the hospitality industries. KFC was founded in 1930, 90 years ago and has
expanded into global markets effectively, currently operating around 22,621 distinct
establishments in numerous countries around the world. It operates from its headquarters in
Kentucky, Texas USA and specialises in selling variety of fried chicken products to its
customers.
MAIN BODY
Marketing management is the strategic process through which a business organisation
such as KFC effectively chooses their target customers and markets and retain in addition to
growing their existing customer base through the creation, delivery and communication of
improved superior customer value to their customers in the consumer markets. A successful
marketing strategy needs to take into account various factors such as the business organisation,
their brand value, customer needs and requirements, pricing strategy in order to effectively
promote and advertise their products to their targeted customers and increase the business’s
productivity and profitability in the consumer markets (Tzempelikos and Gounaris, 2017).
Marketing management orientations comprise of distinct marketing concepts that include and
focus on different strategies and techniques with the intention to produce, market, promote and
advertise goods to the consumers in the markets. These marketing management orientations
should be chosen by business organisations such as KFC in relation to their how these different
marketing management orientations can help build and improve the existing relationship
between the business’s brand and its customers in the markets. The five primary marketing
management orientations available to KFC for their own marketing operations are:

Production Marketing Orientation: This is amongst the oldest concepts present in the business
worlds and states that consumers in any market desire, prefer and favour goods and products that
available to them in the market at competitive and affordable costs. Production marketing
orientation is suited to businesses that can focus on mass production of their products so that they
can make use of the principle of economies of scale and drive low the cost of their products. This
marketing management orientation does not require for the business to have any knowledge of
their customers, their trends and preferences and assumes they only are interested in products
that are prices competitively and are affordable (Gaudenzi and Christopher, 2016). This
orientation would not be immensely effective at KFC as it is already observing decreased
profitability and increased competition in the UK markets. As their products are already judged
to be unhealthy by the public decreasing the prices of their products in the markets will result in
significant increase in customer base.
Product Marketing Orientation: This orientation is the opposite of production marketing
orientation as it places focus on the quality of products provided to customers instead of the price
at which they are sold in the consumer markets. If KFC decides to use this marketing
management orientation, they would have to place stricter focus on the quality of products that
they sell to the public in the markets irrespective of the costs at which they sell them. This
approach would also not be immensely effective for KFC as they already place significant focus
on the quality of their products and are still experiencing decreased productivity and profitability
in the UK’s hospitality markets. Placing even greater focus on their quality would not be
immensely significant in a market that is oversaturated with competition providing similar
services.
Sales Marketing Orientation: This marketing orientation places operates on the assumption that
consumers will not purchase enough products from a business organisation unless they are
aggressively incentivised to do so, thus placing focus on aggressively providing consumers
reason to purchase products through discounts, vouchers and promotions (Adams, Freitas and
Fontana, 2019). This orientation places greater focus on the what a business produces than what
their customer even wants. This marketing management orientation would also not be immensely
effective in the long run for KFC, although vouchers and discounts can attract customers in the
short term. KFC can use this marketing management orientation for a limited amount of time to

increase their customer base and then switch to other orientations when the customers have
become interested in KFC products.
Marketing Orientation: This orientation places the entire focus on the marketing strategies used
by business organisations, segmenting a target customer base for their operations on the basis of
various factors and implements marketing strategies that can satisfy these customers in a better
way than the competition can. This particular marketing orientation can be immensely beneficial
to the operational productivity and profitability of KFC as this would allow them to identify and
focus on their target market instead of trying to service all customers in the population which has
been unsuccessful for the organisation.
Societal Marketing Orientation: This marketing orientation places focus on business
organisations delivering their customers with value in such a way that it provides value to the
society as well (Keegan, 2017). This marketing management orientation can also be beneficial
for KFC as it would improve its image and perception in the public and drive attention away
from the negative lifestyle choices that KFC products are usually associated with. KFC can
effectively use this orientation by treating their farmed chickens in a humane manner and
adhering to legally mandated laws and regulations regulating poultry.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings of the report, it can be effectively concluded that marketing is
immensely important to the productivity and profitability of KFC in the current hospitality
industry. KFC can effectively market their products to the consumers by making use of different
marketing management orientations in addition to using both traditional and digital channels of
marketing through marketing tools such as TV, radio, magazines, social media platforms, online
websites etc., in order to effectively promote and advertise their products to a very large base of
audience around the world and increase its customer base, market share, productivity and
profitability in the consumer markets.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adams, P., Freitas, I.M.B. and Fontana, R., 2019. Strategic orientation, innovation performance
and the moderating influence of marketing management. Journal of Business Research.
97. pp.129-140.
de Sabando, R. and et.al., 2018. The marketing orientation as a university management
philosophy: a framework to guide its application.
Gaudenzi, B. and Christopher, M., 2016. Achieving supply chain ‘Leagility’through a project
management orientation. International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications.
19(1). pp.3-18.
Keegan, W.J., 2017. Global marketing management. Pearson India.
Tzempelikos, N. and Gounaris, S., 2017. A conceptual and empirical examination of key account
management orientation and its implications–the role of trust. In The Customer is NOT
Always Right? Marketing Orientationsin a Dynamic Business World (pp. 673-681).
Springer, Cham.