KFC China, Episode 1

According to detailed research, KFC achieved dominance in China over its major competitors for several reasons: well designed localized flavor, a high quality of service, suitable promotion strategy, a well developed logistic network, and its unique local management method. Just as David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman from Harvard Business School said, "To succeed, the fast food giant had to throw out its U.S. business model. All of KFC's marketing strategies depart from the U.S. model"

Product: Localized Flavor

When it comes to food, especially fast food, flavor is usually the first thing that comes to mind, especially for a Chinese person. This does not necessarily mean that Chinese people totally do not care about the food health. But when faced with the same category, fast food, Chinese people are usually not so concerned on which is healthier.

Currently, KFC China has a menu which includes more than 50 items while the U.S. version only contains about 30. KFC China's menu not only contains more items, but it also includes more types. The 30 items in American KFC are mainly fried chicken, but the 50 items served in China contains a lot Chinese traditional cuisine such as shredded pork soup, Peking chicken rolls, porridge, egg tarts, pot sticker etc. Even the traditional burgers can be substituted by fish and shrimp burger, which attract significant amount of Chinese customers who do not like fried foods.

Because China is a big country with 56 provinces (similar to the states in U.S.), people from different cities have totally different diet habits. For example, people from Sichuan Province and Hunan Province especially like hot, spicy food while people from southeastern area (such as Jiangsu Province) would prefer sweet foods. To cater to different eating habits, KFC makes their food with regional sauce and ingredients. Therefore even though there is only 50 items listed on the menu, there might be more than 100 flavors combined all over China.

Service: Delivering High Quality and Culture

Service quality is also a big factor of KFC's success is its service quality. KFC delivers much superior service quality to its customer with good service attitude, quick serving speed and clean infrastructures. Thanks to the well designed employee training programs, each KFC employee is taught how to interact with customers. Interestingly, KFC does not spend much funding in its employee training. The first line employees' team consists of new employees with experienced ones, so the new comers can learn the most efficient way of delivering the high quality service. Unlike American customer, Chinese people tend to eat at home instead of sitting in the restaurant; therefore delivery becomes a big issue. In China, you can order KFC simply by calling the store and order your food. You can also order everything you want on a shopping website named TaoBao, which is very popular among Chinese people. It will usually take 30 to 45 minutes to get your food and you do not even have to pay extra for the delivery. This really explains why KFC's customer satisfaction rate is so high and why a lot of foreigners from western countries start eating KFC when they come to China. Even though that not all the people in China prefers KFC than other fast food restaurant, almost everyone admits that KFC always has the cleanest restroom compared to any other fast food restaurant.