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Competition between fast food
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A Competitive Fast Food Firm Firms within the fast food industry fall under the market structure of competition. Market structure is a classification for the key traits of a market. The characteristics of a market that is competitive would include: a large number of buyers and sellers, easy entry to and exit from the market, homogeneous products, and the firm is a price taker. Take McDonalds fast food restaurant for example. In 1954, Ray Kroc became the first franchisee appointed by Mac and Dic McDonald in San Bernadino, California. He opened his first restaurant in De Plaines, Illinois (near Chicago), and the McDonald’s Corporation was created. By 1959, the 100th McDonald’s had opened in Chicago. In the early years of the 1960’s, Ray Kroc had bought all rights to the McDonald’s concept from the McDonald’s brothers for $2.7 million. In 1963, the 500th restaurant had opened. By the end of the decade, McDonald’s was listed on the New York stock exchange, had opened restaurants in every state of the union and also outside the USA. By 1972, assets exceeded $500 million and sales surpassed $1 billion, a new McDonald’s restaurant was opening nearly every day. In 1984, Ray Kroc died, but his company was then serving 17 million customers a day, equivalent to serving lunch to the entire population of Australia and New Zealand. If McDonald’s lined up all the hamburgers sold since 1955, they would have circled the equator 103.75 times and reach to the moon and back 5 times. Today, McDonald’s remains one of the most competitive franchises ever created because they still have a large number of buyers and sellers, easy entry to and exi... ... middle of paper ... ...dustry is the ease of entry into the market. Start-up franchises within this market structure can begin operating with relatively low initial investments (compared to other industries). This is not the case where monopoly companies, such as Microsoft is concerned. There are numerous barriers to entry into a Monopolistic market structure, capital being one of the most prominent barriers. If a new franchise offered the consumer a quality product at a reduced price, then the chance of success are greatly increased. McDonald’s established a name for themselves by offering quality food and fast, friendly service. This is a very important concept in the fast food industry. Once they established themselves to the consumers and became more visible, they created more demand, which lead to a greater revenue for them.
Also in 1961, Kroc opened Hamburger University in the basement of a McDonald’s restaurant, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. By 1963, McDonald’s was selling a million hamburgers a day. The company went public in 1965. In 1967 the opened their first international restaurant in Canada. In 1971, McDonald’s restaurants opened in Europe and Australia.
As a company, McDonald’s was first introduced in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955. This was the very first McDonald’s restaurant, which all started in San Bernardino, California in 1954 when Ray Kroc approached the McDonald brothers with a business proposition to start a new company. In 1965 McDonald’s went public and was later, in 1985 added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (www.mcdonalds.com) The company has gone through quite a few changes with its changing CEO’s over the years, but the company seems to be on track with CEO Jim Skinner, named in 2004. Skinner was named the new CEO just in time to clean up after McDonald’s first ever quarterly loss. He succeeded by showing that McDonald’s revenue had climbed 11% during 2006 and net profits had climbed 36%. (Dess, Case 40 Pg. 1)
While peddling about the country he came in contact with the super efficient McDonald's hamburger joint, which was started by Dick and Mac McDonald, who were brothers. He saw this place and optimistically envisioned many more opening up all over the country. He convinced the brothers to let him be their first franchisee. They agreed so in 1954 Ray opened up the first McDonalds franchise. A year later, Ray opened up the second McDonalds franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Only four years after the second restaurant's opening the one hundredth McDonalds was opened. In 1961 Ray Kroc bought the rights to the McDonalds franchise for a meager 2.7 million dollars. To pay this massive sum at the time he had to mortgage his house and take out numerous loans that would eventually cost him 14 million to pay back. After he bought the rights to the name and the company he forced Dick and Mac to remove their name from their original restaurant. But he went even further when he opened up a McDonalds restaurant a block down the road trying to put them out of business. Also that same year Hamburger University was opened.
With strength ultimately comes weakness and McDonald's has its fair share, especially in the last few years. Many weaknesses are due to the external environment which includes market saturation, increased price competition, and food and labor costs. These weaknesses affect many firms in the fast food industry so McDonald's is trying to effectively combat these forces using a differentiation strategy. Developing new products such
Everyone has heard of McDonald’s, but where did this familiar name come from? When people think of American food, it is not uncommon for two golden arches to appear in their minds. This story began with two brothers Dick and Mac McDonald who owned and ran a small restaurant in San Bernardino, California during the 1940s. In 1954 a man named Ray Kroc came across these two brothers while selling multi-mixers and was impressed with the business they were running. The menu was compact, listing options for only a few burgers, fries and beverages, but the restaurant was effective in its operation. Ray Kroc pitched the idea of spreading McDonald’s restaurants across the United States and in 1955 he founded the McDonald’s Corporation. By 1960 he bought the exclusive rights to the name. Kroc was able to expand substantially on this small business so that by 1958 McDonald’s sold its 100 millionth hamburger. (“McDonald’s.com”)
According to Royle (1999) McDonald’s is a very large multinational enterprise (MNE) and the largest food service operation in the world. Currently the company has 1.5 million workers with 23,500 stores in over 110 countries with the United Kingdom and Germany amongst the corporation’s six biggest markets, and over 12,000 restaurants in the United States. In 1974 the United Kingdom corporation was established and in 1971 the Germany corporation was established, currently the combined corporation has over 900 restaurants and close to 50,000 employees in each of these countries (Royle, 1999).
McDonald's Corporation is the largest fast-food operator in the World and was originally formed in 1955 after Ray Kroc pitched the idea of opening up several restaurants based on the original owned by Dick and Mac McDonald. McDonald's went public in 1965 and introduced its flagship product, the Big Mac, in 1968. Today, McDonald's operates more than 30,000 restaurants in over 100 countries and have one of the world's most widely known brand names. McDonald's sales hit $57 billion company-wide and over $25 billion in the United States in 2006 (S&P).
Customers buy when they feel it is necessary giving them the upper hand on the industry. Bargaining power of suppliers: In the quick- service restaurant, the suppliers vary. They really do not rely distributors as large restaurants do. Threat of new substitutes: The restaurant industry is segmented into many parts: full service restaurants ($120 billion); quick- service restaurants ($110 billion); away-from-home managed institutions, examples: food services for schools and hospitals ($21 billion); and other food industries ($106 billion). (Marshall Jones, 1999). Rivalry among competi...
How should McDonald’s respond when ads promoting healthy lifestyles featuring Ronald McDonald are equated with Joe Camel and cigarette ads? Should McDonald’s eliminate Ronald McDonald in its ads?
McDonald’s USA has been feeding the American society since 1940. Recently, the company has had various issues with people posting on social media as well as questioning the restaurant’s food. Millennials created controversy about what McDonald’s was serving its customers and this showed itself in ongoing negativity between social media, blogs, and news sites. This caused an extreme decrease in the restaurants sales. The tactic proposed was to become more transparent with the public, but the focused audience was “curious skeptic” millennials.
McDonald's current customer environment is people on the go or people who don't want to spend a lot while going out and need something quick and good to eat. It is best stated in McDonald's mission statement that they want to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience. As stated before, McDonald's has restaurants in 121 countries and has extensive global experience in customer service and satisfaction. McDonald's is excellent at researching an international area before building restaurant there. For example, in India McDonald's realized that the majority of the population was Hindu and vegetarian, they therefore, did not even bother to put beef or any other red meat on the menu.
In today’s market, McDonalds faces numerous challenges such as fierce competition, a more health conscious customer, and the continual need for improved customer satisfaction and menu. McDonalds needs to go through some changes in order to remain ahead in the fast-food industry.
At the time, Ray Kroc was selling multi-mixer machines for milkshakes and McDonald’s had already purchased eight of his machines. Wondering why this restaurant was using eight of his machines, he decided to visit the restaurant and was really taken back by how efficient the restaurant was being operated. Being a businessman himself, Krock eagerly spoke with the McDonald brothers about expanding their operations towards Chicago and the east coast where Kroc was from. Reluctant at first, the brothers eventually agreed to let Kroc handle all operations of franchising and in return Ray Kroc would give the McDonald brothers half of the sales. Kroc had a bigger vision of expanding all over the states, and becoming the number one fast-food chain in America. He wanted to perfect the production side of the operation and offer the same consistency in the food that McDonald 's offers anywhere in the states. In 1955 Kroc opened McDonald’s System, Inc. Now Kroc was able to not only run his own restaurant but also find other franchisees and expand the business even
Product is fairly similar to competitors – the McDonalds menu is quite similar to many of its competitors such as Burger King and Wendy’s. This forces McDonald 's to have to lower its prices in order to continue to be competitive.
By choosing to expand into markets later than other fast food restaurants Burger King hopes to avoid the problems of developing infrastructure and establishing a market base. For instance, by following McDonalds into Brazil, Burger King avoided the need to develop the infrastructure and mark...