It's also hard to understand just how popular KitKats are in Japan and how their products and limited time offers cater uniquely to the Japanese audience.
KitKat has a lot of competition in the UK where caramels are way more popular than weird KK flavors.
KitKat are already full of wafer so Mondelez wouldn't be motivated to 'put anything in the chocolate bar at all so long as it's not chocolate'. What's cheaper than wafer? I guess if they can make more of the inside wafer, so there's less chocolate coating?
Perhaps you can make wafer bubbly, so it's more air? Although it's cheaper to just put it in a plastic wrapper and fill the wrapper with nitrogen...
KitKat around the world is Nestle. KitKat in the US is under license to Hershey. Licensing is expensive.