Draft of EE1

With the development of society and change of economic model in China, KFC and McDonalds have moved to the Chinese market lay combining their western products with Chinese local eating habits and food cultures. Meanwhile, this is also introduces western values into Chinese society.

When speaking western fast food, we cannot ignore two well-known, influential fast food restaurants, which are McDonalds and KFC. They are both regarded as giants among fast food industry, and distributed internationally. Also, they both aim to working class and middle class; they share similar values that providing large-amount and high-quality food, and conducting a kind of quick and convenient lifestyle; even the prices of these two are pretty close. In fact, compared to KFC, McDonalds is a much bigger enterprise with more funds, more market shares and more influences in America. So, McDonalds should possess same superiorities and take a lead in Chinese market. In contrast, KFC is more popular, has more branches and takes up more market shares than McDonalds in China.

You may be surprised to know that it was KFC who first entered China. 12th November, 1987 was the day when KFC opened its first restaurant in Beijing. McDonald on the other hand, did not enter the Chinese market until 1990. Thus KFC had a 3 year head start. The reason why KFC entered China before McDonald’s was because each produced differing research results of Chinese consumers. McDonald’s research suggested that the Chinese were very stubborn and were unlikely to take to McDonald’s products, which are traditional American fast food. However, KFC found quite the contrary, their research indicated that as long as they made some changes in their products, Chinese would accept their western fast food. As expected, KFC indeed obtained a great success in China, and even though McDonalds was competing with it all the time, it always fell behind KFC.

Through comparing the advertisements of these two fast food companies, we can clearly understand the reason why as a smaller fast food enterprise, KFC can beat McDonalds at Chinese market, and the importance of combining global products with local food cultures.

As the represents of western fast food, the significance of KFC and McDonalds moving into Chinese market is introducing the western values to China at the beginning of the society and economy reform in China, and letting Chinese get familiar with the western values, especially American identity.