Implications of Brand Community Integration in Relation to KFC

The concept of the combination of brand communities and how customers integrate into these brands is the main focus of this study. We will also try to understand the role of social media in the brand community integration. The concept of communities is not new as many different scholars tried to understand its basics. There is also an interesting connection between brands, personal identities, and culture. And the brand community mainly focuses on connections between customers. Firstly we try to understand that the brand community is a selected group of people who share the same ethics, morals, values, and standards. The foundation of the brand community mainly stands on three pillars. These are consumer, brand and consumer relationships. Brands believe to have a consumer-centred relationship. The customer also makes relations with the desired firm. This consumer-centred relationship will result in the emergence and construct around consumption experience.

More importantly, there are various issues that got hype from brand communities like consumer empowerment and embedded consumer role of value creation. In the early centuries, marketers and researchers view the brand community as geographically limited. These researchers enhanced our insight into how consumers in these communities organised their lives and their identities. And researchers have also extended their research to the area of social media’s role in the integration of brand community. Therefore it becomes very important for us to know how social media alters the formation and interaction of brand communities. Social Media is a group of internet based applications that build on technological stones of foundation like web 2.0 and allow the exchange and creations of user-generated content. The user-generated is generally made by consumers and widely popular in public domain involving some creativeness. And the consumers can have 24/7 access to these UGC through social media sites like blogs, video/photo sharing, etc. There are almost all companies that take advantage of social media to connect their employees, customers, and stakeholders. It is a positive step because it gives them a chance to make their company more competitive and successful than their counterparts. Marketers also try to engage their customers more on these social platforms because these tactics really help them to give direction to their business. Integrated customers into brand community enhance customer satisfaction, the image of the brand, building relations and the overall desired marketing strategy. The general performance of the organisation and its financial success mainly relies on customer satisfaction of the brand. Now we will focus on the KFC integrated brand campaign which was a historic step to bring the KFC food closer to the people who don’t get to enjoy it as often as the KFC lovers. So a few years back this KFC integrated brand campaign was held in Australia. The QSR media interacted with top KFC officials and they told that their campaign was conducted to make a reminder in the minds of Australian people of the “Great taste of its Original recipe chicken”. The campaign featured KFC food truck which was bringing chains fried chicken to the small Queensland town. They travelled continuously for three days across Australia to bring 12000 pieces of chicken to Birdsville, Queensland. They had roughly travelled 1934 kms to carry out this KFC Integrated Brand Campaign. They targeted Birdsville because of its less population. And the interesting fact about that place is that the nearest KFC store was 13 hours drive away. It really seemed that it was the perfect place to take their delicious chicken on the road. It was a big step towards the promotion of KFC food. When they hosted their campaign out there in Birdsville, they came to know about the hosting of big red bash by Birdsville. That was the world's most Remote Music Festival. Almost 7000 people came from all over the country to enjoy the bash. Then KFC giant decided to pack their bags and set their sights on bringing the bird into Birdsville. With the power of social media, KFC collaborated with big Social media influencers to host live and exclusive sharing from the colonel streamed via their social channels, provided the viewers with a great facility to be a part of that big joy. They nearly connected with 2.5 million of their KFC fan community.KFC fans were at different peak and couldn’t believe of the KFC decision to share the great taste of their food at this level. All people gave positive comments about the KFC integrated brand campaign. Some people said, 'now no one can say that you can't get KFC in the desert!” And some also said that “they were lucky to have KFC served up to them by KFC staff in such a bizarre location”. It was observed by the company that integration is necessary because it can boost the effectiveness of a company’s network all over the world.

Now during the campaigns, some companies miss out the core central idea across channels to promote the campaign. But KFC didn't do that. It picked the right channels to execute the campaign properly. Now consumers in Australia mostly dislike advertising as compared to other markets. But if a campaign like this has done well and maintained good attention of the people, then it's really fabulous. Apart from all this, KFC really believes in strengthening its relationship with the Australian community.KFC always tries to provide different opportunities for young people to reach their true potential. Adding to this, KFC is one of those companies which is not after business profits and focus on its growth only. It is selflessly involved in social and philanthropic works. If we talk about KFC in Australia, it donated thousands of kilograms of KFC food to the needy people. A few years back, KFC provided not only food but also made funding for emergency disaster relief and helped in disaster by sending volunteers at the spot.KFC also gave jobs to the unemployed in Australia. These types of initiatives really help to make strong bonds between the KFC and its community. The dedicated staff which is not limited to its office role and believed in connecting with people in the outside world makes the job easy. Doing more for its community, KFC has launched the 'KFC Foundation” which will support the Australian youth in the fields of skill development, mentoring and mental wellbeing. Now focussing on Asian markets, particularly about KFC's entrance in China and how it managed its growth in the Chinese community.KFC has targeted to reach almost 15000 outlets in China. It made steady progress even the Chinese people didn't like it in the beginning but it became a renowned brand in the Chinese market. When the Chinese government decided to give greater access to foreign companies in their markets, that move really assisted KFC to establish itself and connect with the local people. Then KFC started expanding marvellously out there. It was a clear cut example of the integration and combination of a western brand and the Asian community. Now China is one of those few countries where KFC's outnumber McDonald's. Being a western brand, KFC gave great dining options at that time. Now, these were the examples of expansion of KFC in Australia and China. Now coming back to the brand community and its relation with social media, KFC knows how to integrate with brand communities on social network sites to enhance brand image. Every organisation must have a formula which can make their customer regularly engage themselves on the company's social media platforms. Many researchers believe that when customers frequently visit a website and spend their valuable time on it, they slowly feel that the site is personally relevant to them. When it happens, customers start becoming part of that community and also spend their time to interact and engage with other customers in the organisation. As the relationship grows on a social platform, it takes that company to achieve customer satisfaction which builds up a strong brand for that particular organisation. Also when a customer is satisfied, he/she becomes loyal to the company and that eventually helps in the financial success of the organisation.

In a nutshell, social media really plays the most dominant role in the customer being integrated into the brand community.KFC uses Facebook and other social media platforms to regularly connect with KFC food lovers. Marketers must initiate marketing and other activity programs on social networking sites to promote this integration. We learned that technology really changed the way of interaction between brand communities and customers. We also studied that brand focusses on relations that are more consumer oriented. Thatswhy when KFC started its integrated brand campaign, it focussed on targeting that population which rarely tasted its food. It collaborated with social media influencers to reach millions of people in Australia which in turn assisted KFC to grow a big market in the country. And choosing that kind of surreal place in Australia shows that KFC was not afraid of losing its charm and brand image. The social works carried out by KFC show that it was committed to its corporate social responsibility. All these deeds lead to the strong branding of KFC and which in turn increased its bond strength with its customers.KFC China started its journey at that time when Chinese people were not fond of western food. At that time, KFC with its motive of expansion tried its best to make a balance between its western food menu and Chinese cuisines. That was also a great example of integration and a combination of the western KFC and the Chinese community.KFC served those people who belong to a different and unique culture. That was a milestone achieved by KFC to bring up a drastic change in the business world. At last, it opened up the doors for other companies to follow the same footsteps and strategies to expand their overall business.