On 10 13, the "list of the top 100 new catering enterprises in China in 2004" was selected by the Ministry of Commerce and others. McDonald's, which ranked second for several years in a row, actually disappeared, while Yum!, which includes KFC, Pizza Hut and other businesses, ranked first. According to the Beijing Times, McDonald's has always been reluctant to announce its sales in the past ranking process, and the ranking party can only list McDonald's on the list with a rough estimate of more than 6 billion. This year, the Ministry of Commerce requires enterprises to provide their sales, and McDonald's that do not publish data can only be excluded from the list of the top 100. McDonald's is reluctant to disclose the figures voluntarily. The industry believes that its sales figures are lower than those of its old rival KFC, which just opened its1500th store in China, while McDonald's currently has only 700 stores.
In western countries, the living environment of Western-style fast food giants has been challenged, and their sales performance has been declining in recent years. In China market, McDonald's and KFC, as imported products from China market, have seen a strong increase in their sales performance. These two Western-style fast food giants are actively winning the favor of China, an eastern country with a huge consumption population, and they show a brand-new competitive ecology in the chase.
Health strategies are evenly matched.
The voice of "anti-Western fast food" has never stopped in western countries. If you only eat western fast food for three meals a day for 30 days, what will people become? Morgan Spurlock, a young American director, boldly turned himself into a white mouse. In this documentary called "Supersize Me" ("Super Size Me"), Morgan confirmed the harm of western-style fast food to human health with personal experiments. This healthy man with a height of 1.9 meters and a weight of 185 pounds was finally sick after a month of McDonald's.
In the United States, McDonald's and KFC even encountered legal problems: Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of California, recently filed a lawsuit against nine famous chain fast food restaurants and food manufacturers such as McDonald's and KFC, asking the court to force them to use warning labels to indicate the content of acrylamide, a carcinogen in their French fries and chips. This is the first time that American prosecutors have filed a lawsuit against the problem that French fries contain carcinogens.
China consumers' health concept is also changing quietly, and their doubts about the nutrition of western-style fast food, such as unhealthy, non-nutritious and easy to lead to obesity, begin to appear. However, the fierce opposition has not yet been highlighted.
Now, western-style fast food companies have spared no effort to emphasize their health strategies to prevent problems before they happen. Recently, a group of KFC's brand-new advertisement on tv was broadcast on CCTV and other major TV stations. The advertisements were presented by ordinary consumers, KFC suppliers, nutritionists and medical experts of KFC's Food Health Advisory Committee to convey KFC's determination to make healthy food all the time.
In close cooperation with health strategy, KFC started sports marketing. In 2004, Li Xiaopeng, a gymnast, Li Ting and Sun Tiantian, tennis champions of Athens Olympic Games, all became the leaders of KFC's "Sports Group" plan, and KFC launched a nationwide three-person basketball match. Wang Qun, senior director of public affairs of Yum! China Restaurant Group, said that the health and vitality of these sports elites have been integrated into KFC's brand spirit, and it has also enriched KFC's brand connotation.
Winning the trust of consumers has become an urgent problem that western fast food giants are seriously thinking about. As the leader of fast food industry, McDonald's has also racked its brains in this strategy, and its pace is in tandem with KFC.
In March, 2004, after the global McDonald's launched the "I like it" brand campaign, renewed its sponsorship contract for the Olympic Games to 20 12 and announced the start of global cooperation with NBA star Yao Ming, McDonald's cooperated with China diving star Guo Jingjing, who was the first sports star spokesperson of China McDonald's in China market.
In March of this year, McDonald's China Co., Ltd. announced that it would launch a series of activities of "Balanced Lifestyle" nationwide, and invited Guo Jingjing, Shen Xue, Zhao Hongbo, Zhang Lin and others, who are popular in sports today, to promote a healthy and balanced lifestyle of "I like it if I eat well and move well". The activity of balanced lifestyle is exactly the same as KFC.
Brand extension McDonald's steals the show
"Do you know coffee?" It is estimated that many people will answer "I don't know" to this question, and they may even ask "What? Selling coffee? " Miss Li's answer in Beijing is "Yes, it's in the Oriental Plaza where I work."
Indeed, there is a small shop called "McCafe" on the first floor of Beijing Oriental Plaza, which provides drinks and snacks such as coffee. Mccafe/kloc-0 was born in Australia in 1993. It mainly deals in all kinds of coffees and distinctive European snacks. After more than seven years of development, it has established more than 300 chain stores all over the world and become a unique member of the McDonald's family. China was the first place to introduce wheat coffee, and the wheat coffee in Beijing and Shenzhen was established in 2000 when McDonald's entered China for ten years. At present, the scale of wheat coffee in China is not large.
In addition to this interesting member, McDonald's announced in 2004 that its clothing and toy brand McKids began to enter the China market, and the first store of McKids has been opened in Shanghai. McKids mainly provides children with clothing, shoes, toys, videos, books and other products. It is independent from McDonald's restaurants in operation, has its own stores, and adopts the outsourcing mode of production and sales. This brand was founded in 1987, and began to set up a monopoly in Wal-Mart in the United States in the 1990s. At present, this brand only has a separate store in the United States.
The brand extension of McKids obviously borrows the brand impression that McDonald's has been deeply rooted in children's minds. In the documentary Supersize Me, all the children tested can identify in the pictures of characters are "Uncle McDonald".
However, McKids seems to be in contradiction with McDonald's global "face-changing" in 2003. In that transformation activity generally recognized by the advertising industry, Uncle McDonald no longer took the children to play with the image of a children's paradise, smiling, he even sang RAP and danced street dance, singing "I'm Lovin' it" with full personality ("I like it").
In terms of brand extension, the rival KFC, which has always been compared by people, has no movement.
The disparity in opening stores continues.
The global competition between McDonald's and KFC is not the same as what we experienced in China. The two are not a heavyweight in the world. McDonald's is the boss. At present, it has more than 30,000 stores in 12 1 countries and regions, with a global turnover of about 40.63 billion US dollars, while KFC has only more than10/000 chain stores in 80 countries and regions around the world. According to the statistics of fast food sales and the number of restaurants in the United States in 2003 by Technomic, an American food industry research institution, McDonald's ranked first with the performance of13,609 restaurants in the United States and sales exceeding $2.2/kloc-0.0 billion. KFC, on the other hand, ranked seventh with 5,524 restaurants and sales of $4.936 billion.
In China, the total number of KFC restaurants is nearly 1500, which is twice that of McDonald's.
KFC's high-speed expansion rate of nearly 70% in 2008 also makes it far away from its rivals. This is closely related to their completely different expansion strategies. KFC has implemented the chain operation mode of "direct chain" and "franchise chain" side by side. In 1999, it began to implement the franchise of "starting from scratch". Since the end of 2004, there are more than 60 franchise stores in 1200 restaurants. However, McDonald's only started this business model in 2002.
For the future development goal, McDonald's plans to open 100 restaurants in 2005 * * *, and by 2008, the number of McDonald's restaurants in the mainland will reach 1000, of which franchise stores will account for 20%. KFC, on the other hand, said that in 2005, it will maintain the strategy of opening stores at a high speed, and extend its network to third-and fourth-tier cities, opening 300 new restaurants in 2005 alone.
One more localized product and one less localized product.
Localized products seem to illustrate their determination in the China market. In this contest, the numerical comparison is another obvious one-more and one-less.
McDonald's localized products belong to the "Treasure Triangle" launched in 2004 1 1 month. It is said that the research and development time of this product is as long as one year, and it is the first food using rice in China market, and it is also the first staple food other than Hamburg.
In contrast, KFC has developed a series of short-term and long-term products to meet the tastes of consumers in China, from the earliest Furong fresh vegetable soup to the later old Beijing chicken rolls, Shiquan Ruyi salad, corn salad, tender spring double bamboo shoots salad, wind knife bean salad, tomato egg drop soup, Sichuan spicy chicken, mushroom chicken porridge, seafood egg congee, wolfberry pumpkin porridge, egg rolls, pork fillet egg burger and so on.
In this regard, a person in charge of McDonald's China once commented: "China consumers prefer poultry to beef, so McDonald's also launched new products that are very popular with customers in China, such as spicy chicken wings, spicy chicken legs, and grilled chicken legs. These are products that are only available in China and are also actively localized."
However, in the eyes of China consumers, KFC's Chinese fast food, such as rice, soup, porridge, and new products with China regional characteristics, such as Beijing-style old Beijing chicken rolls, Sichuan-style spicy chicken, and Cantonese-style gurgling meat, have made them feel "really China", and the number and innovation speed of KFC's Chinese-style products are indeed better than McDonald's.
With China consumers' affirmation of KFC's efforts in Chinese taste, in May this year, Yum!, the parent company of KFC, simply launched its own Chinese fast food chain brand "Oriental White" in China.
In terms of localization, KFC's step is more thorough, but McDonald's analysis may also make sense. "When China consumers enter western-style fast food restaurants, they still want to choose more foods that represent Western elements."