Is KFC Counting its Chickens Before They Broil?
KFC, which ranks fourth in our 2008 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index of Quick Serve Restaurants, trailing McDonald’s, Quiznos/Burger King and Wendy’s, is looking to make some really significant changes to what can only charitably called a fairly inert, aging quick-serve, chicken offering.
The company says that the changes are an acknowledgment that KFC businesses are in need of rejuvenation to meet changing consumer tastes and to fend off competitors.
Well, mature stores and category competition is one thing. Consumers are another.
Category drivers – and the attributes, benefits and values they consist of – are critically important to understanding brand engagement and getting it right when dealing with today’s ‘bionic’ consumers. The reason becomes clear when you realize that these are not measures created by researchers, but do in fact, consumers themselves create measures.
It’s the consumer, not the category at the wheel in terms of stating what matters, how important is it, and how much it contributes to the purchase decision in a category. In a time where the phrase “consumer-centric” gets more play than “Britney’s court hearing” this is a true indicator, which may be why it’s so highly correlated to in market performance. If you’re keeping score by counting your sales and profits and not merely awareness levels, this stuff matters. So what should really matter most is that consumer-created quick-serve restaurant drivers like “Variety” and “Healthy Choice” have taken on greater importance this year.
Anyway, the restaurant giant is looking at makeovers of its mature fast-food outlets, and one of the big options is restructuring KFC sometime next year, using what Yum calls a “non-fried chicken platform,” which, informed marketers and consumers can only assume means “broiled,” and informed marketers and consumers can infer that it meets the most basic requirements of providing additional variety and the appearance of healthy eating.
Can a company named “Kentucky Fried Chicken” get away with serving broiled chicken? Based on the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, the answers would seem to be . . . probably.
The other thing that consumers control is that wily value called “believability.” KFC and Yum Brands saying it is one thing, doing it, is another. Consumers believing it? It takes more than advertising and cheap protein to guarantee that!
For the first time in 11 years all but two of the 57 categories tracked in the annual Brand Keys Loyalty Engagement Index have shown a shift in the drivers of consumer loyalty and engagement. You know the part of the movie where the scientists are drinking coffee in the lab and suddenly a machine that never beeps starts to beep because somewhere the floor of the ocean has cracked open? Marketers had better start listening for that beep!
This year’s category rankings were as follows:
Quick-Serve Restaurants
- McDonald’s/ Subway (tie)
- Quiznos /Burger King (tie)
- Wendy’s
- KFC
- Hardee’s
- Jack in the Box/Taco Bell (tie)
- White Castle
Robert Passikoff, Ph.D. is the founder and president of Brand Keys Inc.
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