KFC's Chinese Market Entry: A Marketing Strategy Analysis (MKT303)

This assignment analyzes KFC's entry into the Chinese market, focusing on the need for expansion, pre-entry market analysis, and strategies to maintain customer loyalty after a significant translation error with its tagline. The presentation covers the reasons behind KFC's launch in China, emphasizing the large population and global branding campaigns. It highlights the importance of understanding Chinese cultural values and conducting thorough market research, including primary research to understand consumer preferences. The assignment also explores solutions to the negative impact of the tagline mistranslation, such as apologizing, introducing a new slogan, avoiding controversial topics, and adapting the menu. Finally, it provides recommendations for future international market entries, stressing the need for expert teams to advise on promotional taglines and market analysis. The analysis uses references from various sources to support its arguments and recommendations.

Kentucky Fried Chicken
Need for KFC to launch in the Chinese market
• KFC launched their operations in 1987 in China and
became the first fast-food chain to open a restaurant
in China (Romualdez, 2017).
• The products of the company such as fried chicken are
simply acceptable for the Chinese people rather than
the American food like hamburgers due to which they
want to perform the activity of branding.
• In addition to this, the population of the china is one
of the reason due to which KFC wanted to make
their product promoted for which they introduced
the campaign with the tagline “finger licking good”.
• In the year 2017, China recorded the population of
about1.39 billion which is further expected to rise to
1.420 billion by 2023 (Statistics , 2018) .
• The KFC launched into the Chinese market because
the brand launches all their promotion campaign
across the world which includes China also. This was
one of the reason due to which the brand launched
in China.
Prior to entering the Chinese market
• Prior to entering the market, the KFC should have
analysed the market appropriately so that they can
make the promotional campaign successfully.
• The cultural values of the china are different from
the other countries which are required to be
understood by KFC.
• The company should have made use of the primary
research method with the help which they can
understand the needs, preference, lifestyle, values,
and others (Zhou and Zhang, 2012).
• Along with this, KFC should have analysed that their
tagline will be appropriate for attracting the
customers or not.
KFC do to ensure customers still visit KFC
• KFC company need to ensure that the customer
visit after the translation error and could be done
by bringing the changes to the menu according to
the preference of Chinese customers (Chitkara,
2015).
• They could have brought the decrease in the
prices of the products which are offered by them
because the prices of products were high.
• KFC is totally depended on the society for which
they could have tended to act in the favour of
society rather than their personal interest.Solutions to the problem
• The solution to the problem is that
they should apologize for the act
unintentionally done by them and
affected the people with the help of
the promotion advertisement
campaign.
• A solution of the issue was to bring the
new slogan that is "So good" which was
done by KFC. The slogan line reflects
that the food is healthy and good to
eat.
• The company requires to avoid the
direct confrontation, open criticism and
controversial topics as this will help
them in maintaining harmony.
Recommendations
• It is recommended to the
company to analyse the
market with the
preferences of customers
and cultural values clearly
before expanding the
business in the market.
• The company need to hire
an expert team who can
suggest them appropriate
for the promotional tagline.
References
Statistics (2018) Total population of China from 2001 to 2023 (in millions) [Online]. Available from:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263765/total-population-of-china/ [Accessed on 8th September 2018]
Zhou, L. and Zhang, Q. (2012) Cultural adaptation pattern analysis of McDonald’s and KFC in the Chinese market
[Online]. Available from: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:534795/fulltext01.pd [Accessed on 8th September
2018]
Romualdez, V. (2017) The History of KFC in China [Online]. Available from:
https://bizfluent.com/about-5476140-history-KFC-china.html [Accessed on 8th September 2018]
Chitkara, A., (2015) Understanding the Impact of Cross Cultural Issues in International Advertising. Advances in
Economics and Business Management, 2(12), pp. 1151-1156.