In an era when customers have more and more choices about products and services, it is extremely important to capture customer insight, a challenge for businesses to constantly update and research. So what is customer insight? Let’s find out through the article below!
What is customer insight?
Customer Insight is (finding a way to) deeply understand the meaning, desire, and facts that are deeply hidden in the customer’s mind that have not been clearly stated at a level beyond what the customer themselves thinks.
In simple terms, customer insight is the thoughts and desires that customers do not express. This is hidden inside, creating preferences and directly impacting purchasing decisions. These desires can only be realized when analyzing the collected customer data.
An example of customer insights
To be able to give the most intuitive view, we can refer to an extremely famous example of KFC. Let’s see who they are and how they used customer insights to get through the crisis!
An Overview of KFC
KFC stands for the phrase “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. This is a fried chicken brand founded on March 20, 1930 by Captain Harland Sanders and owned by Yum! Brands, known as the world’s largest corporation in the field of restaurant systems, with 39,000 restaurants in more than 125 countries.
Starting as a “Home Meal Replacement” to sell to busy families, Mr. Harland Sander has started making fried chicken for customers stopping at Corbin gas station—located in the state of Southern California. With nearly a decade of effort and effort, he has successfully created a secret recipe with 11 kinds of herbal flavors and cooking techniques, bringing a particularly attractive flavor to his fried chicken.
With a smart business strategy, KFC fried chicken products have created trust and preference with consumers. Ten years later, KFC has more than 600 franchises in the US and Canada. In the Chinese market, as of 2018, KFC had more than 5,600 stores in 200 cities with $5 billion in revenue. Until now, the company has welcomed up to 12 million customers per day at different restaurants based in 109 countries around the world.
The previous performance of the enterprise in Vietnam
With its success and development, KFC does not sleep on victory. They are making the market bigger and have a strong effect on all of Asia, including Vietnam.
1997 is considered the beginning year of KFC Vietnam when the first store was opened in Ho Chi Minh City. However, in contrast to the success in other Asian countries, KFC faced many difficulties in accessing the Vietnamese market, as consumers were not familiar with the concept of “fast food”. Therefore, KFC has continuously lost money for 7 years since opening the store. Not only that, the number of KFC stores grew very slowly. After 7 years, KFC opened 17 stores. The expansion of KFC’s distribution system, especially in the retail space leasing segment, makes this growth rate slow.
Find out Customer Insight
With the difficulties encountered, as well as realizing that the old development strategies were not applied well to the Vietnamese market, KFC decided to change. As a result of its research, KFC knows the following about the minds and actions of Vietnamese customers:
- Vietnam is an agricultural country. Vietnamese people love food, so Vietnamese cuisine is also very developed with many delicious, attractive, and eye-catching dishes. They like to eat rice. Lengthy satiation from their food gives them the stamina to finish the job. Fast food, especially fried chicken, is still quite unfamiliar to Vietnamese customers.
- Besides, KFC also found that young people’s psychology is very fond of Western cuisine, but the price of these fast foods is much higher than that of more affordable alternatives, such as Com Tam, Pho, Bun Bo, …
The Marketing Strategy of KFC
After determining the customer’s insight, KFC has set up very special marketing strategies, hitting the pain to conquer the Vietnamese market along with the unique quality of fried chicken with a difference. KFC uses 11 types of spices to create a special taste. KFC has made changes in taste, size, and product design to suit the tastes and needs of Vietnamese people.
When it first entered the market, KFC implemented a low price policy to make it easier for customers to access products, and after gaining a loyal customer base, KFC switched to a strategy of higher prices. Although the price does not exceed much, this has a strong impact on customer psychology about the leading brand image and the thinking that products with higher prices will have better quality.
Besides, along with the original product of crispy chicken pieces by pressure, marinated with a recipe of 11 herbs and spices, KFC also processed other dishes such as crispy chicken with lemon leaves and crispy chicken. Boneless, soft bread, and mixed cabbage, especially some chicken rice dishes, are also smaller in size to suit the eating habits of Vietnamese consumers.
Marketing Result
With the expansion into other ingredients at reasonable prices, KFC has created excitement and curiosity for domestic consumers. In addition to the preference of Vietnamese users, the brand has also successfully positioned itself in the competitive market, gradually achieved its business goals, and a series of stores have been opened in Dong Nai (1998), Hanoi (2006), Hue (2008), Nha Trang, Quy Nhon (2011), and many other city centers.
With the development and expansion of the system, as of now, KFC has more than 140 stores in 32 major cities and provinces and employs more than 3,000 people to serve customers.
Hopefully, the above article will be able to help you have an overview of customer insight as well as visualize its applications, thereby building effective marketing campaigns for your brand. Don’t forget to follow Metard to learn more useful information every day!
