The Development of Burger King
Burger King was co-founded by James McLamore and David Edgerton in 1954 in Miami, USA. Just in time for the rapid growth of the American fast-food industry in the 1960s (Brand History, n.d.). During its initial period, Burger King focused on promoting its most popular burger-Whopper. Because of the distinctive advertising, Burger King grew rapidly in the United States and its chain stores have expanded at a breakneck pace. Before long, its rapid expansion ran into the obstacle of a shortage of capital. To gather more capital, Burger King took the Pillsbury Company’s merger advice. However, this option didn’t help Burger King to improve its current situation. Without getting enough support from the Pillsbury Company, Burger King could only watch its rival rising rapidly. By the early 1970s, McDonald's had far surpassed Burger King as the market leader in terms of the number of stores, with Burger King in second place (Burger King, n.d.).
To go against the status quo, Burger King has launched a whole new marketing campaign. It came up with ‘Have it your way to be against the leader of the fast-food industry. Burger King's new marketing campaign focused on customers' changing tastes and advocated satisfying customers' tastes which correspond to the slogan ‘Have it your way’. Burger King's marketing strategy was a huge success which led to the Market share and restaurant sales soaring. The rapid growth of Burger King posed a threat to McDonald's. Then McDonald’s resorted to legal action to cancel Burger King's advertising. Due to legal action, Burger King had to stop its offensive strategy and turned to imitate McDonald's by adopting the same strategy as McDonald's. They decided to enter the burger, breakfast, and chicken markets at the same time. Thus, Burger King started to go downhill.
From then on, Burger King has not found a new niche and failed to position itself appropriately. This led to the inability to capture customers and lose the opportunity to reach its peak period (Burger King, n.d.).
Burger King in China
Burger King opened its first store in China in June 2005, located on Nanjing West Road in the Jing'an District of Shanghai. As early as around 2003, Burger King had the intention to enter China`s market. They commissioned an international consulting firm to conduct an initial study of the Chinese market. Burger King touched China more closely after Brennaman joined in August 2004. The manager, who was CEO of Continental Airlines and the head of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, began his tenure with his sights set on China. He believed that ‘The Chinese market is huge and changing day by day, and we see it as a very important market. (Burger King, n.d.)
‘Localization’ is the core concept of Burger King's business in China. In addition to products that are close to the taste of Chinese customers, Burger King is intentionally integrating into China in terms of raw material supply, logistics system, and management team. In the path of expanding the Chinese market, Burger King was also determined to go out of the Chinese character and let more Chinese investors help it to open up the territory. After opening about 10 directly operated restaurants in China, they have adopted franchising to accelerate their expansion. Until 2019, Burger King has been present in more than 140 cities and exceeded 1,300 stores (CCTV 3·15 Gala Statement, n.d.).