Discuss about the Research Proposal for Changing Consumers Perception.
The success of the retail business is completely customer-driver. It is indeed challenging to keep maintain the competitive advantages in the market because consumer preferences are keep challenging with times. There are many internal pressures in the industry of fast food restaurant and cafes including KFC, McDonald and so on. To capture the maximum consumer demand KFC invented own secret recipe of Sander (Recipe with spices and ranges of 11 herbs). By the introduction of serving fried chicken in the Bucket system, the company has gradually increased their popularity among global audiences. The main competitive advantages of the company are the high standard supply chain and the system of the distribution. However aggressive expansion by foreign rivals increasing the eating options for consumers (Paulsen, Rognså and Hersleth 2015). Evidence suggests immense changing preferential food habits of consumers in the fast food restaurant and café industry. For instance, KFC, being the subsidiary company of YUM was decided to be sold by the parent company to reduce the operational loss of the YUM. Despite working hard to create irresistible taste and experiences that delight consumer’s time, KFC faced many religious conflicts and thus results restricted consumption of the products of company at times. Therefore, changing patterns of consumer choice in terms of KFC’s fast food products requires to be evaluated and analyzed being chosen as the research topic foe this proposal.
Based on this research topic, the researcher will design the entire research process by formulating the research aim, objectives, and research questions. After developing the aim and objectives of the research, the researcher will discuss the literature review where recent journals, case studies, articles regarding the KFC’s struggle, competitive challenges and fights for sustainability over the years will be discussed. However, the evolving fast food consumption patterns is the core essence of the reviewing the literature (Manning 2015). Based on the literature the researcher will chose which tools, approaches, techniques would be suitable for getting the desired results in the methodology section.
The aim of the research is to analyze the changing patterns and the reactions towards the intake of KFC. By aiming at this, the researcher is set out the objectives of the research which are as follows:
Several impressive growths of the developing countries over the past two decades ensure the par capital growth incomes in the hands of most of the global consumers who prefer to eat fast foods in their daily life (Manning 2015). However, the researcher noticed that the share of consumer spending on food has recently declined despite countries maintained consistency with the overall economic growth. It indicates that the fast food business has rapidly changing with the different perceptions of consumers. Nowadays consumers have become choosy. To manufacture the ranges of products with flavoring new and presenting differently are the ongoing challenges for fast food restaurants and cafes such as MacDonald and KFC. This company is the second largest fast food chain has successfully operated more than 18000 stores around 115-118 countries around the world. To maintain the competitive advantages, the company introduced the new recipes such as Sander which is the unique blend of eleven herbs. Furthermore the company introduced a new trend of serving the fried chicken in the cardboard Bucket. The company has successfully defeating all the competitions coming from the other rival companies in different nations and has ensured huge average annual sales of approximately to 1.2 million dollar in 2013. However, the company experienced a huge setback in 2015, when YUM was all set to sale KFC business in India due to failed to gain any profit after made many efforts by the management. The company was observed that consumers suddenly have been cut down their budget on discretionary spending. On the other hand, despite the second dominating position of KFC’s in the world-wide fast food industry, it encountered fierce cultural obstruction in many countries such as China, India and other Muslim nations (Paulsen, Rognså and Hersleth 2015). Firstly, this has happened in China. Being an ancient country with a long-established history and unique oriental culture, this foreign company was being criticized for their patterns of adaptation and the way Chinese customer perceived their products (Hugstad and Durr 2015). Thus the company was caught by many author’s attention due to cultural differences in the Chinese market. In the recent times, Kentucky Fried Chicken have been faced strange cultural consequences and criticized the company for slaughtering millions of under processed chicken in a dreadful way, which is considered unlawful in many Muslim countries and India where there are huge populations exists from Muslim communities. The same situation was faced by this American company in other Islamic countries. Being recognized as the western food chains in many Arab and Asian countries, KFC restaurants have been stormed, bombed and burned down in fits of anti-American rage or terrorism over the past decade. The company has become a topic of debates over encroachment of non-traditional values. There were many scholar article published cited concerns that the restaurant was another sign that the United States is trying to gain “cultural influences” over Iran. These results, KFC are still banned in Iran under orders from the higher authorities of the country. Later the company received request from an Islamic Imam to have Islam-approved meat served in their chain but this American food chain company refused these offer in Hong-Kong for the first time (Hugstad and Durr 2015). In this way, the cultural influences changed the human perceptions and demand of food consumption and KFC faced this managerial problem by many years. Now the company is mainly concerned about the security issues to function in the global market. Though there is a huge cultural difference of Western and Asian, new generation people of India hugely appreciates the secrets of crispy chicken (Paulsen, Rognså and Hersleth 2015). Due to economic liberalization policy of the government of India, KFC initially has received permission to open 30 new outlets across the country. The company has become popular due to having substantial upper middle class families with the trend of families eating out in most of the major cities. However, KFC faced severe protests by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). This regulatory body even released a video tape showing the brutal treatment in poultry firms of KFC. This hampered the year end sale of the company during the phase of nineties. Despite the company faced many cultural constraints in India, the company planned a massive expansion program in India considering the values and beliefs of Indian culture.
Gap of the literature:
The managerial issues and problems are difficult to measure for the researcher because all such data are confidential and non-accessible for the third party. On the other hand, depending only on the published data and journals regarding such issues may not give the authentic outcomes of the literature.
Research questions:
The researcher will address specific at the end of the research study by addressing the following research questions:
A progressive research must maintain a structure and procedure which comprises some typical research process in form of following stages:
With the expectation that the chosen research topic holds the relevance, the researcher selects the research area in the first stage. To discuss the research topic in more descriptive manner, the researcher will formulate the research aim, objectives and significant question which address the problem statement of the research clearly. In that context, the researcher will select the appropriateness between the formulation of the research questions and the development of the hypothesis. This stage is vital because the following stage of methodology is completely depends on research aim and objectives or hypothesis. In the third stage, the research will conduct comprehensive reviews of the literature. Here the researcher will form an opinion after the studying different perspectives and approaches of the changing consumer perceptions in order to intake the food consumptions because consumers has become choosy due to an impressive economic growth over the last two decades in most of the developing countries including India. In the next stage, the researcher will select the specific data collection method on the basis of critically evaluating suitability or non-suitability associated with several alternative data collection methods. After gathering all data and relevant information, the researcher will be preceded by the great level of preparation for the successful completion of data collection method. Data will critically examine in the section of data analysis for the observations of research aim and objectives. Based on the outcome of the research, the researcher will reach at conclusion stage where the researcher will justify what the study has achieved in the due course. Following all of the stages above, the researcher will organize the entire research study and close the research procedure within a specified time frame.
Research methodology gives researcher a framework for conduct the research systematically (Yin et al. 2016). By the use of various tools and techniques, the researcher will conduct this research. To identify the evolving issues related to changing perceptions of consumers and impacts of disgraceful cultural understanding against the intake of KFC in India or particularly other Muslim countries, the company needs to choose a suitable research design. The purpose of the research design is to explore the specific aspects of the research area. The researcher may chose three types of research design: “Descriptive”, “Exploratory” and “Explanatory”. “Descriptive research design” provides the additional information about the research topic. In this approach, the researcher collects information instead of making guesses or elaborate models to predict the future. On the other hand, “Exploratory research design” describes as the initial research into hypothetical or theoretical ideas. Here the researcher forms an observation about the research topic. Furthermore, “Explanatory research design”, is described as an attempt to connect ideas to understand the different consequences of the research. For this research, the researcher will follow the “descriptive research design”. By the approaching these research design the company will gain an in-depth understanding of the topic of the research.
In this section the researcher will also decide the suitable approach of collecting such data and information which are essential to conduct such research. Here the primary and secondary both data collection methods will be used. The secondary data research is required for conducting the extensive literature about the chosen topic. Here sources of data will explore different articles, journals, books about the behavior and patterns of consumers regarding the changing perceptions of eating fast food habits will be discussed. On the other hand, the primary research consists of a collection of original primary data collected by the researcher. It is often undertaken after the researcher has gained some insight into the concerned issue by the analyzing of the secondary research (Smith 2015). Here the researcher will explore both qualitative and quantitative data for getting the best research outcomes related to the topic. Moreover, the researcher will select the sample for getting the statistical data for the chosen respondents (Palinkas et al. 2015). In this research, people from the age group of 18-50 years of different religions will be selected for participating respondent because ranges of ages consumed goods with various choices.
For conducting the research, the best research design needs to explore the sufficient amount of data which needs to collect from different sources (O’Leary 2013). According to Pickard (2012), the adequate data helps to explore different perspectives of the concerned issue. As per the research methodology, the researcher will explain both primary and secondary data for presenting the better analysis of the topic of the topic of the research. The secondary sources will help to understand the cultural perspective and patterns of intake of KFC. For gathering primary data, different region people of the age group of 18-50 years who may be a consumer or not interested to intake KFC foods. Therefore, the researcher will get the variable responses. By conducting the survey, the researcher has chosen Dandenong’s KFC considering the best location because it is situated at the centre of Melbourne City. Generally people of this area are come for dinner and they are from the different language and diverse cultural background. This is a method of quantitative data analysis where personal observations are collected and critically analyzed (Tayur, Ganeshan and Magazine 2012). On the other hand, the face-to-face interviews will be conducted under the qualitative data analysis section. The managerial people of different locations of KFC will participate in the discussion regarding the changing food intake habit of the global audiences. Furthermore, the cultural factors indulge brutality slaughtering of chicken for making the processed chicken recipes of KFC raised many issues against the company’s operation. Therefore, the managerial people of the concerned company are the best people to share their responses regarding this sensitive issue. This is a qualitative data analysis where methods of enquiry employed in many of academic disciplines (Silverman 2016). In this way, the research will analyze both qualitative and quantitative data through the process of primary data collection method.
Gantt Chart:
Expected research outcome:
By the successful completion of this research, the concerned company, KFC will get to know about the consumer’s perceptions and theoretical thinking about the products of the company. Based on such results, the management of the American based company will anticipate the future sales. This research may help to recover the issues which may responsible for decreased product demand in the India and Other Muslim countries.
Conclusion with assumed contribution of the research:
The researcher may hope that this research will provide a clear perspective about the different cultural values, beliefs, norms and a particular food consumption habits as well. This will help to understand the changing consumer’s trends and perceptions regarding the intake of fast food consumption. This will definitely contribute in company’s sustainability in the foreign market.
References:
Hugstad, P.S. and Durr, M., 2015. A study of country of manufacturer impact on consumer perceptions. In Proceedings of the 1986 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 115-119). Springer International Publishing.
Manning, L., 2015. Determining value in the food supply chain. British Food Journal, 117(11), pp.2649-2663.
O’Leary, Z., 2013. The essential guide to doing your research project. Sage.
Palinkas, L.A., Horwitz, S.M., Green, C.A., Wisdom, J.P., Duan, N. and Hoagwood, K., 2015. Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 42(5), pp.533-544.
Paulsen, M.T., Rognså, G.H. and Hersleth, M., 2015. Consumer perception of food–beverage pairings: the influence of unity in variety and balance. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 2(2), pp.83-92.
Pickard, A., 2012. Research methods in information. Facet publishing.
Silverman, D. ed., 2016. Qualitative research. Sage.
Smith, J.A. ed., 2015. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.
Tayur, S., Ganeshan, R. and Magazine, M. eds., 2012. Quantitative models for supply chain management (Vol. 17). Springer Science & Business Media.
Yin, Z., Valdez, A., Mata Jr, A.G. and Kaplan, C., 2016. Developing a field-intensive methodology for generating a randomized sample for gang research. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 28(1), pp.81-90.
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