KFC restaurants provide diversified meals with different tastes to its customers. Among these meals we can find three types of salads that can be topped with roasted or fried chicken, Zinger Burger that is a regular sized burger that regularly consists of a boneless fillet of hot and spicy chicken, lettuce and mayonnaise in a burger bun, and the ice creams that are available in different flavours such as chocolate, vanilla and caramel.
Most modern fast food stores have now implemented some forms of localization in order to satisfy the markets of foreign countries. The processes and decision that make responsibilities are closer to the countries in question and only recently, KFC has been able to quietly slip back into the Indian market without a considerable hostile response from the local community. Yum Brands Inc. still uses a similar approach to their franchising and still implements control over the stores they set up through advertising, business coaching, training, development and cooperative sourcing, but now it uses varied menus in order to capture the market of the foreign areas.
After India, KFC has changed their business strategy somewhat in that they still use a Global Standardization strategy but use a degree of local responsiveness. This is partly because of the results in India and the movements of the competition to make their product similar to that of the host country. For example changes in their menus in China and Indonesia to that in Australia and the US.
To evaluate and improve its design of products and services, KFC focuses mainly on consumers’ feedback and the local culture as well. Whereas, the consumers’ might forget to complain about some cases as they are blinded by some other stuffs the company provides, so here comes the main role of the company’s manager to be creative and innovative to come up with new solutions that will satisfy more and more the consumers.
Problems faced by KFC
Even if KFC is one of the largest fast food companies in the world, it faces some problems that could be harmful for its image and for its benefits in the long term.
Some of the problems faced by KFC are presented below:
The absence of a Drive in. In our days more people prefer to pick their meals and eat wherever they want, the drive in is appreciated by those customers because they don’t have to waste time to park their cars, walk into the restaurant and order their meals. KFC loses many customers because of that, those customers go to McDonald’s who offers the drive in service.
KFC food is recognized as non healthy and as we know people want to take care of their health. The company should take this into consideration and introduce new healthy meals or make its menus healthier.
Hygiene is also a problem faced by KFC but also by all the biggest fast foods in the world. If the company changes this aspect it can be transformed into an order winning factor and will make more customers come to KFC.
Solutions Proposed
As we have seen, KFC is facing many problems that are affecting its image and can lead to a decrease of its sales. In order to face them, KFC might have to do some extra advertising to show to the customers that the company is changing and becoming better.
KFC should add a new service which is the “ Drive-in” to make it easier to the customers to get their meals without wasting time parking their cars and queuing inside the restaurant while they are not interested about eating in the restaurant or they don’t have enough time to waste eating in the restaurant, or why not adding a home delivery services.
To improve the meals served in its restaurant, the company can contact some nutrition specialists and inform people of this new step as we know that people start carrying about what they eat and they avoid all these products that might affect their health.
Finally, the organization can also work with another company which is specialized in the hygienic domain and put some hygiene standards that should be respected by all the fast food company’s around the world.
Referencing
Operations Management (4th edition) by Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers and Robert Johnston.
http://www. kfc. com/about
http://www. yum. com/
http://www. oppapers. com/essays/Mcdonalds-Project/181384
http://www. icmrindia. org/casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Ethics/KFC%20-%20India%20-%20Ethical. htm
http://www. kentucky. name/Kentucky_Fried_Chicken/encyclopedia. htm