Characteristics of McDonald’s
Intangible, Inseparability, Heterogeneity and Perishability
In relation to intangible McDonald’s prides itself as having excellent customer service. McDonald’s trains their employees to be able to handle complaints efficiently. Research has shown that only 5% of people who have a complaint bring it to the attention of the customer service department. 45% of complaints are made on the spot to the employee they are dealing with. 50% of customers who encounter a problem in McDonald’s never make any sort of complaint. As employees are usually the first point of contact for customers, McDonald’s recognises that it is important to fully train their employees in good customer service. McDonald’s creates a customer friendly
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Inseparability characteristic of a service refers to the fact that services are produced and consumed at the same time. They cannot be separated from their providers, whether the providers are people or machines. The employees of McDonald’s are a part of the service and so are the customers. The two together both influence the service that is being offered. In a restaurant, all customers are present while an individual customer is getting the service and the behaviour of the other customers can determine the satisfaction of the service delivered to that individual customer. The management of McDonald’s make sure that the customers involved in the service do not interfere with each other’s satisfaction. Services are variable and very difficult to control. This is because they greatly depend on who provides the service as well as when, where and how the service is provided. McDonald’s make sure to use quality control in order to provide its customers with consistently good service. McDonald’s hires the right people at the right time to deliver an excellent service to their customers. McDonald’s have a standardised …show more content…
For example McDonald’s are constantly making sure that the shoot where the food is held is being refilled whenever there is a gap in it. They have two people making burgers in the kitchen. This process splits the time in half. Staff members are fully trained and know that once there is a gap in the shoot, the gap needs to be refilled. McDonald’s are aware of the burgers that are most popular and these products are called runner products so therefore the shoot is always full of runner products. Also another way McDonald’s manage demand is by selling certain items on their menu at certain times of the day. For example McDonald’s usually sells breakfast from 5.30am (depending on the opening hours of each particular McDonald’s) until 10.30am
The way that Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers does business and markets it's product to consumers is due to the change in our society to where the consumer wants the biggest, fastest, and best product they can get for their money. This change in society can be attributed to a process known as McDonaldization. Although McDonaldization can be applied to many other parts of our society, this paper will focus on its impact on Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers. My belief is that the process of McDonaldization, where the ideology of McDonald's has come to dominate the world, has caused Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers to emulate McDonald's style of running a franchised restaurant chain in terms of efficiency, calculability, and control. However, since McDonald's has become the epitome of "fast-food" in our society, Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers has had to change their focus to giving the consumer a higher quality product in a relatively fast amount of time. So, Wendy's still caters to a McDonaldized society in terms of giving them a meal as fast as possible but making quality their number one priority to give people a viable option from McDonald's. In addition, I have used my girlfriend who manages at Wendy's and observations I gathered while at McDonald's as further information for this paper.
Critically analyse Ritzer’s theory of ‘McDonaldization’ and the associated term ‘McJobs’. To what extent do you agree with Ritzer’s argument that a ‘McDonaldization of Society’ is occurring in modern times, said to be characterized by the increasing rationalisation of work organisation? Illustrate arguments with practical real-world examples.
McDonaldization is becoming the new wave of job types where workers are being deskilled, dehumanized and exploited. Machines are taking over tasks which the employees used to do such as bank machines (interact). The McDonaldized jobs now instead of making the employee do all the work they have the customer working too, for example when the customer cleans up after eating. These jobs are becoming less interactive and personal because workers are becoming dehumanized and only allowed to follow a script, there is also the fact that fast food Company’s use drive through, where limited interaction occurs and are many restrictions. These types of jobs which the author George Ritzer labeled “McJobs” are run by organizational principals such as; efficiency, uniformity, predictability and control.
The process of McDonaldization, where the ideology of McDonald's has come to dominate the world, has caused many restaurants to emulate McDonald's style of running a franchised restaurant chain in terms of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. First, before I discuss the impact of Mcdonaldization on restaurants, I will define what McDonaldization is. McDonaldization is the process by which the principles of fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society, as well as, of the rest of the world. George Ritzer created this concept of McDonaldization as a continuation of Max Weber's theories on bureaucracies (Ritzer...
Ritzer explains that the way McDonald’s runs their entire corporation has been perfected to the form known as McDonaldization. According to Ritzer, this is “the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world” (Ritzer 5). McDonaldization has the four main components: efficiency, predictability, calculability and control of non-human technology. The first, efficiency, is the “optimum method for getting from one point to another” (Ritzer 15). The second portion of McDonaldization is the calculability which according to Ritzer is the “emphasis on the quantitative aspects of products sold (portion size, cost) and services offered (the time it t...
In 1940, McDonalds was not the multi-million dollar industry that people recognize today. In fact, the company started out as a small drive-in style BBQ restaurant, owned by Dick and Mac McDonald, in San Bernadino, California. However in 1948, the entire workings of the restaurant were altered, making it the dawn of the McDonald’s empire. This new drive-in, like other drive-in restaurants of its time, struggled to make a large amount of profit, due to selling low-priced food using traditional methods, which were often labor intensive and expensive. But the McDonald brothers fixed this problem by reducing their menu 25 items to nine items: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, soft drinks, milk, coffee, potato chips, and a slice of pie. Their staple item, the 30 cent hamburger, accounted for 80 percent of their total sales. Later, the brothers altered the production to that of the Fordist assembly line in order to make the whole operation fast and efficient, halving the price of their items, including their prized hamburger. (http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mcdonalds_history_timeline.html?DCSext.destination=http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mcd_history.html).
McDonaldization differs somewhat from bureaucracy as it concerns itself with its five main points: Efficiency, Calculatability, Predictability and Control. For the emphasis to be on these points it has an effect on employee’s jobs. Often it involves the de-skilling of the employees, under McDonaldization employees do not need a wide range of skills, In fact just to be productive they only need to know how to complete a single task. This has numerous benefits for the organisation, primarily it cuts down on training costs as it does not cost much to train for low skilled jobs, and as these jobs are so low skilled employees can be paid minimum wage. It also leaves employees with little bargaining power as staff can be replaced so easily. Jobs often become standardised and continually repetitive and leave room for little or free thinking or initiative to be employed. Staff are often replaced or governed by technological changes.
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?
The business operations of McDonalds are affected by various social customs and beliefs in the countries of operation. The individuals in the societies across the world have different belief systems and values associated with their daily lives. This affects the operations of McDonalds.
The main problem that McDonald’s faced was the fact that the food it served was mostly unhealthy. With the change in consumer mindset, people started looking for healthy alternatives and government imposed regulations on unhealthy foods. To deal with this the company should introduce healthier items in the menu while maintaining its USP of stellar service, low prices and low waiting times. This will help the company in retaining its customers and dealing with the change.
McDonalds believe that good customer service is the responsibility of everybody in the company. Every employee has a part to play in providing with a service with best practise found anywhere in the trade.
McDonald’s strengths are an established fast food restaurant with a friendly caring staff. Suzanne’s employees embrace that philosophy by being friendly and caring to the seniors. Another plus is the seniors are friendly and neat and someone that isn’t a regular would perceive the place as a friendly place. Further they are neater than most customers and clean up their...
The McDonald’s story begins in 1937 in Pasadena, California. Richard and Maurice McDonald are the two brothers that conceptualized this assembly-lined style of a fast-food establishment, in a small drive-through restaurant (Vignali, 2001). Ray Kroc, in 1954, believed this idea would make a great franchising business; he negotiated with the McDonald brothers to allow him to have exclusive franchising rights within the United States (Vignali, 2001). Ray Kroc’s vision was to create an affordable restaurant where families could enjoy a good meal with their children. Today, the McDonalds restaurant is found in over 117 countries, and the business serves more than 60 million guests a day (Talpau & Boscor, 2011). The philosophy has stayed consistent; to ensure quality product, value, friendly service and cleanliness at any McDonald’s restaurant anywhere in
McDonalds was chosen to be the organization as a group decision. The reason being that it was an organization recognized all over the world, having a high profile and a strong iconic brand. Given the size of the organization, it was decided that there are a lot of strategic options available to McDonalds.
Service companies have no final product to deliver. Instead they only deliver a process to it’s customer, even if a part of the service company also delivers a final product due to the process. From the customers point of view, the service process can be seen as open because the customer can interact in the process and affect the final result of the process. Therefore the perceived value is affected by the service from the service process as a result of the actual process. Another aspect which also affects the perceived quality of the service is the image of the company which can influence the perceived quality positive, neutral or negative depending on if the customer views the company as good, neutral, or bad. (Grönroos, 1998). Service quality can although not be definite as a single measurement but Ziethaml et al.(2006) means that service quality includes five