Kfc India

Fast food chains are amongst the most rapidly globalising businesses in the world. Their ability to internationalise into foreign markets with relative ease and multiply their worth makes for an exciting prospect for owners and directors of such firms. This paper will look broadly into the internationalisation of KFC into India, and will discuss the key issues that led to the successes and failures of their internationalisation process. From the outset, expanding into a foreign market such as India looked like it could only be accompanied by huge gains for KFC. A booming Indian economy and millions of the population hungry for consumerism meant that KFC could expand rapidly into the market to beat their competitors to the punch and capitalise on such a promising opportunity. Unfortunately for KFC, they were met with large scale problems along the way which they had never anticipated. This paper explores and identifies some of the issues that led to the successes and failures of KFC internationalising into India. The first section discusses franchising as the preferred entry mode which KFC used to expand into India and why it was the favourable choice, followed by the exploration of KFC’s architecture which discusses their strategy and structure decisions. This is followed by an investigation into the ethical and cultural implications that KFC had to endure and overcome and how these implications impacted on KFC internationalising. This paper concludes with a discussion on theoretical recommendations for KFC in India on measures to overcome such problems and obstacles with internationalising into a foreign market.

In 1991 the Indian government began trade liberalisation to avoid an impending international default and a failing economy (Ghosh, 2004). This change in policy allowed KFC to consider entry when before it had not been possible. Before the deregulation, India had restrictions on every stage of developing an international business in India, from entry