Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in Saudi Arabia - Free Essay Example

Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation is franchisor of the worlds most popular chicken restaurant chains that specialize in the original recipe, grilled chicken and freshly made chicken and sandwiches. The founder of KFC, Colonel Harland Sander founded a concept in 1952 that gave birth to the most celebrated chicken recipe in the US and the world. Colonel blended 11 herbs and spices and incorporated it in his chicken recipes that have continued to serve KFC customers to date. KFC is estimated to serve 12million customer each day in more than 115 countries and territories around the world. Moreover, it is said that 185 million people see KFC commercials at least once a week. This piece of innovation by the founder of KFC has continued to employ millions of people all over the world.

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Given the market potential that KFC offers to the foreign market, this paper shall focus on the marketing mix strategies that can be used to open up the KFC market based in the US to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a semi-arid region and, therefore, lacks fresh food in its market. It has over time relied on canned food and fried foods, as they can be easily stored in the refrigeration system (Kotler & Roberto, 1989).

The marketing mix is a set of controllable, tactical marketing tool that companies use to produce the desired response from its target market. It consists of everything that accompany can do to influence demand for its product on its targeted group of people. However, for a company to achieve the targeted market, it has to focus on several key tools of marketing namely; product, price and place and promotion (Majumdar, 1996).

The four keys of marketing are of importance to a company that wants to explore the market in a new area. The product refers to the good or service offered by the company to the customers. This entails the careful evaluation of the products that the company intends to launch in the new market. To launch KFC products in Saudi Arabia, selection of a chicken recipe that is most likely available in the kingdom and as the time passes by the introduction of other complex recipes would follow as the market demand rises. The selection of the recipe to start with shall be influenced by the background culture of the people of Saudi on the kind of fried food they have been exposed to (Kotler & Roberto, 1989). In acquiring this information, its shall be of help in building a KFC base product in Saudi Arabia.

To realize the KFC market share in Saudi Arabia, the price of the product has to be attractive to the customer in the foreign market. Price is the only market mix aspect that created sales revenue opposed to the others that incur costs. The price of a commodity can go a long way to influence the reception of the product among the targeted customers (Majumdar, 1996). Attaching a price to a product has to consider the economic level of the proposed market, which entails the livelihoods of the people and their average earnings. In pricing a KFC product in Saudi Arabia, consideration of the economic level of the people is useful in offering a chicken recipe product that shall be affordable to many of the people in the region. In small towns, selling the products at lower price shall attract the average customers who are economically disadvantaged and, therefore, increase the numbers of sales. In large towns, offering higher prices of the KFC product can be done, since most of the customers are government, private sector employees with good salaries.

The place or location of setting up KFC restaurants or leasing is crucial in determining the number of customers the company shall serve in Saudi Arabia (Majumdar, 1996). Since KFC mainly serves fast foods. Setting or opening up the branches of KFC in the towns and near schools will boost the market of its products. The targeted customers shall be the government workers, students, and tourists. This group of people mostly have limited breaks at their respective areas and, as a result, they prefer taking fast foods for breakfast and lunch as they can be easily packed and carried to the place of work or institution (Jeannet, Hennessey & Jeannet, 2004).

Promotion of the KFC products in the new market of Saudi Arabia is instrumental in determining the returns of the company. Given that KFC products are new products, a survey on estimated level of competition that KFC is likely to face shall determine the magnitude of the promotion plan that should be adopted to counter the competitive companies in the field of fast foods (Jeannet, Hennessey & Jeannet, 2004). The introduction of discounts on products purchased shall go a long way to propel the new products of KFC in the market. In addition, to minimize ethnocentrism, that is, KFC being viewed as a foreign company, enrollment of promotion strategies that to emphasize on the services that KFC offers opposed to its originality and background shall be of help. The move shall be aimed at brushing off any propaganda that may arise from the threatened companies.

In considering these four aspects of marketing mix strategies discussed above, the establishment of a strong market base in Saudi Arabia by the KFC shall be realized within a shorter period.

References

Kotler, P., & Roberto, N. (1989). Social marketing. New York: Free Press.

Majumdar, R. (1996). Marketing strategies. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.

Paley, N. (2005). The manager's guide to competitive marketing strategies. London: Thorogood