Fried Chicken in Korea

Koreans love fried chicken!

There such an obsession with fried chicken that it has become the national meal along with ramen noodles.

I came across this article arguing why fried chicken is so expensive!

Basically, chicken becomes more expensive, as it gets processed. This makes sense because labor is involved but it becomes extremely expensive later on to the consumer.

So what is going on?

Well, the argument is that the franchise company is making a lot of money. The franchise company counters that a lot of money is spent on advertising and marketing.

Hmmm…so what is going on.

Let’s find out.

Fried chicken establishments are one of the most common small businesses in Korea. People jokingly say that if there is nothing to do that they will fry chicken.

So the fried chicken industry is extremely competitive. This means that there is not a lot of profit. Unless the franchise companies absolutely dominate the fried chicken market this cannot be the case. Also, it is unlikely that the franchise companies are an oligopoly because the amount of fried chicken marketing and advertising is way too high.

Streets are littered with fried chicken coupons and advertisements. Fried chicken commercials hire very famous celebrities and air on prime time. Yup, the competition is there.

Well, then why are fried chicken franchises advertising so much? Because fried chicken is a commodity. So they have to differentiate through branding, which costs money, and gets added to the cost of the fried chicken. Ultimately, the consumer is paying for the branding of the fried chicken!

So what can be done? Well, the consumer can stop eating fried chicken. That is the easiest solution. Vote with your dollars. The other solution? Buy the fried chicken that does the least advertisement, show that you would rather have cheaper chicken than branding.

In the end, there is no need to argue and get upset. If you don’t like it, show your opinion with your money. Also, remember that there are so many substitutes for fried chicken from pizza to Chinese food 😀