McDonalds Corporation
McDonald’s is the undisputed king of burgers. This has been the trend in the fast-food industry from their creation in the 1960’s to their massive growth in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and now the new millennium. Over the past forty years, McDonald’s has fully taken advantage of their strengths but because of maturity in the fast food industry, more focus will have to be put on opportunities, weaknesses, and threats.
Strengths.
The first strength of McDonald’s has been their product strategy. Throughout the past three decades they have simply been a hamburger and fries Restaurant. Growing customer wants and needs along with increased competition has forced them to alter and improve their menu to better fit the environment. Factors such as growing competition and consumers becoming more health conscious have forced them to make these changes.
Today McDonald’s offers a wide variety of products that consist of 26 items. Breakfast items include biscuit sandwiches, Egg McMuffin, hotcakes and sausage, sausage McMuffin with egg, and scrambled eggs. Sandwiches include the Big Mac, cheeseburger, Crispy Chicken Deluxe, Filet-O-Fish, Grilled Chicken Deluxe, Grilled Chicken Salad Deluxe, hamburger, Quarter Pounder, and the Quarter Pounder with cheese. Dessert items include baked apple pies, chocolate chip cookie, hot fudge sundae, ice cream cone, McFlurry, and milkshakes. Other items on the menu include the apple-bran muffin, Chicken McNuggets, French fries, Garden Salad, Happy Meals, soft drinks, and other beverages.
Promotion has also been a strength for McDonald’s. They have always focused promotion around good food, friendly folks, and fun. They have also spent a considerable amount of money on promotional programs such as Monopoly, Happy Meals, and the Big Mac. In addition to these promotions, McDonald’s signed a ten-year contract with Disney combining promotions for food items with Disney movies. They also continue the successful Beanie Baby promotion that is credited as the company’s most successful promotion ever. On October 25 they introduced the American Trio Collection of Beanie Babies that celebrate the American Political Process.
In addition to promotion, McDonald’s has also been successful at placing restaurants in every available position. The increase of outlets per year has re...
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...ket. These restaurants have the ability to be expanded throughout the United States and provide a large amount of sales domestically. This will be growingly important as sales in current McDonald’s restaurants flatten. These restaurant chains may also have the ability to be expanded internationally depending on their success in the U.S.
An opportunity that McDonald’s has not been taking advantage of is their environmental concerns. Recently McDonald’s was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their conservation and recycling efforts. The EPA cited McDonald’s as the industry leader because of its continual review and evaluation of packaging materials. This is something that could be used in a promotional effort to better their image in consumers’ minds. It could be positioned directly against competitors to show that McDonald’s does care about the environment.
McDonald’s has done well with establishing a plan for future growth and expansion. As long as they continue to build awareness for their other brands, expand internationally, and better manage product introduction in existing McDonald’s restaurants, they will continue to be number one.
McDonald’s, which has operated in London successfully for thirty years, has recently become aware of dropping sales which have been attributed to the country’s growing health concerns. The plan the British marketing team has developed includes sending the famous “golden arches” on hiatus while a new campaign will attempt to reposition the fast-food chain as a healthy choice for consumers. The theory is interesting, due to McDonald’s strong consu...
As indicated by the contextual analysis, it is said that McDonald has possessed the capacity to utilize different procedures to elevate and support their upper hand in the business sector. A piece of its business system is its arrangement to eliminate its Super Size French fries and sodas as it tries to make a healthier picture for itself. The Super-Size alternative is to be eliminated trying to thin down its menu in the midst of expanding concerns and issues being raised about corpulence (Crouch,
Over the years McDonalds has had a reputation of being one of the largest fast food chains in the world. According to an investigation journalist, Eric Schlosser, they are known for something more negative. In the article, Fast Food Nation, Schlosser informs the audience of McDonald’s use of the tactics of illusion and a sense of care towards their consumers to reel them in. The thing with Schlosser’s claims now is that his article was over ten years ago, which means McDonald’s has made improvements since then, and a reason why I disagree with Schlosser, because his claims of attack against McDonald’s are expired and failed to realized that McDonald’s is successful globally because of their actions of trying to make a positive difference by
It has been noticed throughout the running of McDonald’s that they tend to market to the eyes of children with Ronald McDonald as their notorious “spokesclown” that is recognized by 96% of American children. Also, in 1998, McDonald’s signed a long-term deal with the Walt Disney Company to include Disney merchandise as giveaways in its Happy Meals.
In order to understand McDonald's structure and culture and why they continue to be the world's largest restaurant chain we conducted a SWOT analysis that allowed us to consider every dimension involved in the business level and corporate level strategies.
McDonalds traditional competitors include many of the other fast food outlets across the country, i.e. Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Wendy’s. It has been shown by Professor Michael Waterson (2004) that the presence of a Burger King, for example, will increase the likelihood that McDonalds will open near by. Thus it can be seen that the threat of competition from traditi...
The main target customer for McDonald's includes parents with young children, young children, business customers, and teenagers. Perhaps the most obvious marketing for McDonald's is its' marketing towards children and the parents of young children. Ronald McDonald was first introduced in 1963 and marked the beginning of their focus on young children as a critical part of their ongoing business. Parents like to visit McDonald's because it is a treat for the kids, and the kids enjoy the cartoon like atmosphere. McDonald's also targets business customers as a part of their core business. Business customers may stop during the workday and can count on fast service, and consistently good food. Another major target of McDonald's marketing is to teens. Teens find the value menu especially appealing and McDonald's markets their restaurants as a cool place to meet with their friends and to work (The Times 100).
McDonald’s has the largest fast food market share in the world. As mentioned, it serves 68 million customers every day in 119 countries, allowing it to be the second largest outlet operator with more than 34,000 outlets.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce you to the fast food industry, how it is everywhere in the United States and increasingly spreading globally. The majority of the fast food restaurants in the United States are dominated by hamburger fast food restaurants. Amongst the burger segment, McDonald’s is the number one leader in the burger industry, followed by Burger King, and Wendy’s respectively (Oches, 2011).
When researching McDonald’s through online sources, it is clear that nutrition is a major concern of the public visiting the fast-food chain. Secondary research conducted shows that there are several case studies and other secondary source searches around the same topic. McDonald’s has often been the center of nutritional attention within the fast-food industry. Secondary research shows that the restaurant has recently made changes to the American Happy Meal to reduce the amount of French fries offered and replace the portion with fruit (Strom, 2011). In a study conducted by McDonald’s a secondary source reports the meal cuts calories by 20% for the children’s meal (Strom, 2011). This is a critical move by the organization on children’s obesity is currently a hot topic within food chains and attention is driven by the Obama administration. Secondary research also shows that although the public has major health concerns with the food chain, profits are increasing during a high point of an economic recession (Dahan & Gittens, 2008). Acco...
McDonald’s target market is conscious of budget and is made up of those who is looking to stretch a dollar while still getting the quality food in clean environment. One of the main market segment of McDonald’s is the youth and the family with young children. Most of McDonald’s locations have indoor playground to attract the families with young children. It offers economic way to spend quality family time without stretching their budget. McDonald’s failed attempt at Angus burger is a prime example that McDonald’s target market is not the high end premium dining but the value driven, simple, and convenient food
Firstly, McDonald’s paid attention to the children in every country. They have built “happy land” for them and offered the “happy meals” with innovative toys to them. Since children is one of the biggest consumer groups to McDonald’s, and they have created a place with “happiness” culture to attract the children. It is a successful decision that building a business by focusing on the children since it can encourage the whole family to come to McDonald’s.McDonald’s is not only selling the happy meal to the children, but also selling American culture to them, it is a proper strategy to build the brand loyalty from th...
McDonald’s was the first company to try to export America’s fast food and changes in eating habits to other nations. McDonald’s has over
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.
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...