Do in China as the Chinese Do: An Overview of KFC’s Localization Strategies in China

Abstract

Kentucky Fried Chicken has been one of the most household international brands in urban China since it opened its first Western-style quick service restaurant in Beijing in 1987. As the present largest fried chicken restaurant company in the world, KFC aims China as the most promising market and succeeds in its localization strategies in the huge China market. The most prominent success of KFC in China is not only the outcome of KFC’s persistent tenets “quality, service and cleanliness” but also the achievements of its keen perception of cross-cultural marketing and its understanding of Chinese culture. This essay aims to investigate the process of KFC’s entry into China’s market and analyze its particular localization strategies towards China. A series of KFC commercials in China would be analyzed from the perspective of cultural values. Related issues and debates would be discussed as well.

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where have all the flowers gone
where the flowers gone
where have all the young girls gone
where did they all gone
where have all the young men gone
where the soldiers gone
where have all the graveyards gone
where have all they gone
Adapted from WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE
words and music by Pete Seeger

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This mail was forwarded by one of my best friends. If you happen to know me, after reading all my answers do you think now you know me better?
Sorry guys, you have to be able to read Chinese first.

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Something trivial bugs me a lot. I seem to get lost in mind and not know what is going on. All the bad things resonate one another; the domino effect makes me feel worse. I know it’s something called “selective memory”, but just can’t get myself relieved.
The first thing is I forgot to take out my jump drive in jeans pocket before laundry. I even didn’t realize it until I got my clothes dried. Gee, guess what? It still works! [Not an ad, but the Sandisk Cruzer Mini rocks!] Kinda a blessing in disguise–I wouldn’t think of drying it if I found it earlier. Thanks god I made a mistake big enough.
The other thing is more confusing, or may I say, mysterious. I lost my ID card yesterday and got it back by incidence. But today I lost it again. It’s something called ill-fated? I don’t know if I’ll be lucky enough to find it back. I hope so, or I have to spend 15 bucks to make a new one and moreover, I have to be photoed with my terrible hair style.

Read one post from Taiwan in CNBlog group mentioning about the 23rd page game. Following the links I finally got to stopdesign. The following is what I read from there:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
In my case, “brands provide consumers with a range of different benefits that make brands more than satisfactory to consumers.” from Kim Sheehan’s Controversies in Contemporary Advertising, my textbook for ADPR 241. Does it make sense to you?
Well, Sheehan elaborated his statement. These benefits include benefits in terms of product quality, perceived value and defensive benefits.

Let’s remember the day ten years ago.
On April 20, 1994, the NCFC project opened a 64K international dedicated circuit to Internet through Sprint Co. of the United States, realizing a full-function linkage to Internet. Since then China has been officially recognized as a country accessible to Internet. It was chosen as one of China’s top 10 scientific and technological events in 1994 by the Chinese press community and designated as one of China’s key scientific and technological findings in 1994 by the State Statistical Bulletin. [ source ]

Don’t panic, it’s not virus! It’s simply some Chinese. I’m sorry for writing this post in Chinese, but it’s fun for me. If you can’t read the Chinese, please make sure you’ve set your Encoding as Unicode (UTF-8). Sorry for all the inconveniences brought to you.
附上靓照一张，滋润眼球先

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Liu, J. (2004). China Shuts Down Two Internet ‘Blog’ Sites. Reuters, Mar 18, 2004.
Two of the largest blog hosting service providers in China were shut down by Chinese officials a few days ago. Given no any official explanation for the censorship, it is widely believed that the closure is due to some content deemed objectionable posted on the blog sites. The “inappropriate” content is, according to some Chinese Internet users, a well known doctor’s letter to China’s senior leadership asking them to reassess the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

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Selnow, G. W. (2000). Internet Ethics. In R. E. Jr. Denton (Ed.), Political Communication Ethics: an Oxymoron? (pp. 203-241). CT:Westport: Praeger publishers.
The chapter titled “Internet Ethics” by Gary W. Selnow conducts an exploratory scrutiny into influences of the Internet on political communication within the United States. This article explains the social and media effects of the Internet-based political campaigns on democracy, and discusses some ethical issues caused by the participation of the Internet in political communication.

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The name of the Visual Thesaurus caught my attention when browsing a list of del.icio.us bookmarks. My first impression on the appearance of this dictionary was it looked exactly like a social software. Colorful nodes, solid/dashed lines, and expanding/shrinking animation. In some sense, it is a social software for words–it not only explains the word per se but also brings up other related words. Different node and line styles are used to indicate the distinct relationships. Fourteen relationships, including antonym, pertains to (pertainym), Participle of,Derived from, etc, can be displayed in VT.

Sounds cool, huh? Give it a shot. Be careful, the results might be dizzling — I was totally overwhelmed by the results after a few exploratory clicks. Surprised by the imagination and innovation of the system, I got lost in the mass information presented as well. As for me, VT is a better tool for brainstorming instead of getting someone buried by so much relevant/irrelevant information.

In this era, too much information is as perilous as no information at all.