To what extent, the business strategies used by Kentucky

Fried Chicken(KFC) can determine their ethical behaviour as

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is the second-largest fast food restaurant chain worldwide in
sales, after McDonald’s. Nowadays, it has 26 521 restaurants around the world. Harland Sanders
founded KFC, and in his forties, in 1930, he started selling his southern-style chicken for the first time
in Corbin, Kentucky. 22 years later, the first KFC franchise opened in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he
used his 11 herbs and spices top-secret chicken method of cooking. This is how KFC started
expanding and becoming more recognized among customers all over the world. However, when KFC
started to globalise, criticism began because of some unethical practices, such as trying to keep a good
brand image of the fast food restaurant at any cost or increasing their customers and sales without
complying with the pertinent rules. But, before going further, what is ethics? Ethics in this business
investigation refers to analysing if KFC’S actions to improve their fast-food chain show (or not)
concern about their customers and the environment. On the other hand, the strategy consists of
planning multiple methods or systems to accomplish KFC’s goals to keep expanding and growing.
These methods include marketing, financial, growth, human resource and operation strategies. Having
all this clear, to what extent business strategies used by Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) can determine
their ethical behaviour as a business?

In the first instance, KFC had the pressure to attract more consumers because of the increase
in competition in fast food restaurants. For that reason, KFC used some financial unethical strategies
to keep on top of the market. This is evidenced when fast food restaurants were in trend, more
specifically in 2006, when KFC was sued for the excessive amounts of trans fats, which are prone to
cause diabetes or heart diseases, in their oils for frying chicken. This is the worst and most dangerous
type of fat according to doctors and nutritionists. People must not consume more than 2 grams of trans
fat. So, KFC, in response to the lawsuit and critics, told their consumers that all their products were
meeting the governmental rules. Yet, they were not being honest to their consumers, because in a
study and investigation process from the Centre for Science in the Public Interest developed in
Malaysia, it was found that an extra-crispy combo meal was made with 15 grams of trans fat, over 7
times the recommended maximum consumption of this fat. Trans oils are used mainly in fast food
restaurants for giving a tastier flavour and texture to the food. Apart from this, they can be used to fry,
because they are endurable, practical to use, and economically accessible. KFC at that time knew the
consequences trans fats led to, but even so, they still used it because it was economically cheaper than
other natural or less fatty oils. Moreover, KFC used trans oil because they thought they would get a
good profit return based on their little investment in these oils. Finally, KFC was taking advantage of
families that are dependent on fast-food restaurants or quick preparation meals, because of a lack of
time due to work schedules or other reasons. KFC and other fast-food chains are the solutions for
those types of families, to avoid spending time preparing meals because they had quick-service
restaurant services. So, we can analyse KFC’s unethical practices such as their huge usage of trans
fats on their products, and not being honest to their customers, telling them they strictly follow
government regulations, even though trans fats lead to dangerous consequences, they still use them in
large quantities. This is considered unethical business behaviour.

Besides, KFC also had an ethical issue regarding their growth strategy and maintaining its
brand image as cleanest and positive as possible, at any cost. The problem started in 2015 when
McDonald’s declared that they were willing to stop using antibiotics on their products. The reason
why the fast-food restaurant decided this was because organisations like the World Health
Organisation, among other organisations focused on environmental and medical aspects, were
concerned about the consequences of using these antibiotics. The main problem was when antibiotics
were mixed up with food prepared and then ingested by consumers, they could develop resistance to
these antibiotics, meaning that they will not be effective when these consumers take them when
treating a disease. Regarding this, KFC did not have transparent behaviour, because they refused to
give information about their antibiotic usage, and if they were in agreement or disagreement with such
practice. This is unethical business behaviour because by doing this, KFC is not being honest with
their customers, to avoid damaging their brand image, but in an unethical manner.

Human antibiotics can be used when producers are breeding and nurturing animals, a process
which is called “production processes”. This process leads animals to gain weight and make them
grow faster, consequences that are not ethical either for the animal or for the future consumer of that
animal. Focusing on KFC, they did not inform about their chicken distributors, the only thing they
said after some time was that the chicken they served in the US was a high-quality one and without
antibiotics. This statement suggested that KFC is not using antibiotics in served products.
Nevertheless, they were still using them for production purposes, which means that their distributors
are doing it, so to not lose contact with them and not affect the production of their products, they
preferred to avoid the truth. Finally, in 2017, after two years of ethical conflict, KFC, stated that they
were committed to stopping providing their consumers chicken raised with antibiotics.

Thus, what was the impact on KFC’S stakeholders in terms of ethics? The stakeholders
impacted by the antibiotic dilemma were KFC’s decision-makers and YUM Brands Inc, KFC’s
suppliers and customers/consumers. First, the impact on KFC’s decision makers and YUM Brands Inc
was that even though McDonald’s was warned by multiple medical organisations about using
antibiotics, they still buy them from their suppliers who raised animals with antibiotics. If KFC would
refuse to buy from their suppliers, they would need to change their supply, so they would spend
millions of dollars doing that to satisfy customer needs and medical organizations' requirements.
Regardless of whether this would be an ethical decision from KFC, they still decided not to
completely refuse to buy from distributors that produced antibiotic products, causing KFC to avoid
future economic and reputation issues, even though it is unethical behaviour. Then, KFC suppliers
have a connection with the decision-makers. They were criticized because of keeping selling
antibiotic products, causing an impact on people’s health. Suppliers knew that raising animals with
antibiotics was unethical, but they kept doing it that way. In this case, the role of the decision-makers
from KFC is fundamental because if they stop buying antibiotic products, their suppliers would be
forced to stop using antibiotics for raising their animals. Finally, there was an impact on customers,
after KFC's response of stopping providing antibiotic products. Their impact as stakeholders was that
they could have a better brand image of KFC because, after 2 years of the ethical dilemma of
antibiotic products along with McDonald’s, KFC changed their unethical practices. However,
consumers could not change their perspective of KFC. After all, they were not honest with them,
because they initially said they did not serve antibiotic products, but their suppliers raised animals
with antibiotics. Regarding this impact on all KFC stakeholders, we can finally conclude that KFC's
growth strategy was unethical.

In conclusion, the pressure KFC had because of the fast globalization of the fast-food
industry, caused them to use unethical financial and growth strategies, to accomplish their goal of
being one of the world’s most recognized fast-food chains in the world. These unethical strategies
implemented by KFC started to be judged by society and medical organisations because they were
only focusing on the growth and financial expansion of their business, that’s why KFC tried to change
their strategy, so they could retrieve their good brand image, something that they did not achieve at
all. Even so, there are still millions of consumers daily in KFC, which encourages KFC to not do any
major changes to critics. In the future, we will see if KFC still be on the leaderboard of fast-food
chains in the world if they keep using the financial and growth strategies mentioned above.