C/M/247. Dissertation+Proposal. How Do International Marketing Strategies Help Firms Achieve Competitive Advantage? The Case of KFC in Chinas Fast Food Market

This dissertation examines the appropriateness and effectiveness of KFCs internationalization strategy in helping it to achieve competitive advantage within Chinas fast food market. Unlike internationalization into other Asian countries, China represents a more complex and uncertain environment for foreign firms. This is the result of a very distinctive political, economic and socio-cultural make-up, which has traditionally been hostile to foreigners. This dissertation helps to unravel these complexities, using the SLEPT approach to outline and discuss the international marketing environment facing firms wanting to enter the Chinese market. Here, socio-cultural, legal, economic, political and technological issues help to provide a framework that highlights why some firms are more successful than others. The literature review also focuses on key cross-cultural marketing issues that firms, planning to engage in marketing campaigns in China, need to take into account. These cross-cultural issues cover issues of differing customer needs, individualism versus collectivism, the independent versus interdependent self, institutions, social conventions, habits and customers, as well as language. In the analysis and discussion that follows, the appropriateness and effectiveness of KFCs internationalization strategy in helping it to achieve competitive advantage within Chinas fast food market is assessed in light of the international marketing environment and literature review, already discussed. Last pages of the file contain 2000 words project proposal for this dissertation