A Study Of Cross-cultural Adaptation Of KFC In China

Nowadays, with the arrival of global marketing era, cross-cultural contacts between the oriental and occidental corporations are getting more and more frequent. Marketing across cultures is in fact a kind of cross-cultural communication. Market, especially international market, shows the functions of cultures such as the cultural preference for the products'colors, package and so on. What is more, business cultural environment is a crucial factor for the development and enlargement of market. Therefore, cross-cultural negotiation awareness and skills are indispensable to multinational corporations'development on a world-wide scale. In the dialectical process of globalization and localization, without going to extremes, glocalization is more neutral and productive in the business field for corporations to occupy more market shares. Moreover, cross-cultural adaptation has been playing more and more significant role in corporations'development processes. Therefore, it is of great necessity to carry out a deep-going study on cross-cultural adaptation of successful multinational corporations in the Chinese market to inspire or illuminate Chinese corporations targeting on foreign markets. Leading in the fast food industry, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has been considered to be the typical representative for studying the process of cross-cultural adaptation. With Yong Yun Kim's cross-cultural adaptation theory and cross-cultural adaptation structural model as theoretical foundations, the thesis is to elaborate cross-cultural adaptation measures taken by KFC. That is how KFC adapts itself to the Chinese market and gradually integrates Chinese cultural features into itself successfully. Meanwhile, the thesis is to explore the factors impeding or facilitating the cross-cultural adaptation process from three perspectives: environment, predisposition and intercultural transformations, aiming to find how the three conditions influence cross-cultural adaptation process and contribute to the success of KFC in the Chinese market. In addition, the thesis also investigates other promotion strategies adopted by KFC in order to find out the practical values of cross-cultural measures by comparison. It is hoped that this thesis could make a little contribution to the improvement of cross-cultural communication skills especially cross-cultural marketing skills in the business field and shedding light on Chinese corporations'cross-cultural marketing.