Word: mainlanders
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...China has often seemed a land of dashed dreams for foreign companies eager to sell to 1.3 billion mainland consumers. But for KFC, this frontier has proved unexpectedly bountiful. Colonel Sanders, the goateed (and quite dead) Southern gentleman who is KFC's founder and marketing icon, rules the country's fast-food roost. Since opening its first mainland outlet in Beijing in 1987, the fried-chicken chain has gone on to become the most recognized global brand among urban consumers in China, according to an ACNielsen survey in 1999. KFC says more than 2 million Chinese eat at its stores...
...China, where there are more than 900 KFC restaurants and at least one new branch opening every other day, the outlook is much sunnier. The mainland now constitutes about 15% of Yum's operating profits ($273 million in the third quarter of 2003) and accounts for approximately 40% of its international business, according to Speiser. And because China's population is about five times that of the U.S., the company figures this is just the corporate equivalent of an appetizer. "There should be tens of thousands of KFCs, Pizza Huts and Taco Bell Grandes here," says...
...first-mover advantage. The company's initial outlet opened in Beijing within sight of Chairman Mao's mausoleum in Tiananmen Square in 1987, a time when many Chinese still wore blue Mao suits and refrigerators were transported by tricycles. There were no fast- food restaurants anywhere on the mainland. (McDonald's debuted in Shenzhen in 1990 and came to Beijing in 1992.) The company made some early missteps: for example, KFC's advertising slogan "finger-lickin' good" was mistranslated into Chinese characters that meant "eat your fingers off." But China was opening up to the outside world, and KFC benefited...
...stayed in touch with consumers' needs," he says, adding that KFC did a better job of "staying relevant" in China than it did in the U.S. Though KFC still offers its mainstay "original recipe" fried chicken, the company has tweaked just about every other menu item to suit mainland tastes. For example, KFC in China recently switched from white meat to dark in its chicken burgers. "Foreign visitors have complained," admits Qun Wang Jamieson, KFC public-affairs director of greater China. But sales of the sandwiches have doubled since the switch. KFC also discovered that side dishes that work...
Watson, who announced earlier in the year that she would step down from the directorship on Dec. 31, 2003, will be going on a research trip to Hong Kong and mainland China but will come back to the University as a lecturer and curator in Fall...