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.
Over the half century, McDonald’s had been defining the fast food industry and well known for its low price and convenience. However, as the rise of Wendy’s, Subways and Chipotle Mexican Grill, McDonald’s starts losing revenue and facing the strategic problem of losing its uniqueness by trying to satisfy all the customers in different segments. For example, McDonald’s offers a kiosk feature that allows customers to customize everything about the burger, from the type of bun to different cheeses and sauces that goes on it. This concept is similar to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread, where consumers can customize ordering and get fresh ingredients. However, the major customers of McDonald’s are low-income, and the kiosk concept leaves
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.
McDonald’s Corporation (MDC) known for its famous golden arches is the number one largest chain of fast food restaurant in the world. With headquarters in the United States and restaurants in 120 countries serving around 86 million customers a day. About 80% of the restaurants are operated by a franchisees or affiliates. McDonald's revenues come from the expenses paid by the franchisees such as fees, royalties, rent, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. According to Hoovers, McDonald's Corporation in 2013 made and annual revenue of $28,105.7 compared to $27.5 billion made in 2012. Most of the restaurants are freestanding units offering dine-in and drive-through service, but McDonald's also has many restaurants located in airports, retail areas, and other high-traffic locations. The company has nine major markets – Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US – that account for 75% of sales. Although McDonald is a leading brand, the top companies that give McDonald competition include: Doctor’s Associates Inc., YUM! Brands Inc., Starbucks Corporation, Darden Restaurant Inc., and Burger King
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.
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
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).
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...
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...
Have you ever wondered how the business empire of McDonalds was started? With over ninety nine billion served, it was started in 1940 in San Bernardino, California. It was started off as just a Bar-B-Q that served just twenty items. Its first mascot was named “Speedee” They eventually realized that by setting up their kitchen like an assembly line that they could be much more productive and get their food done faster, with every employee doing a specified job; the restaurants production rate became much higher. A milkshake machine vendor came into their small restaurant one day, his name was Ray Kroc. He saw how much potential the restaurant has, so he bought it out and opened one of the first franchises. Within the first year of Ray Kroc buying it, there were one hundred and two locations all around the world. McDonalds currently is one of the largest fast food restaurants in the world and currently has served over sixty four million customers through one of their thirty two thousand sites. It has almost become a way of life for America. Though, McDonalds started off as a small business between two brothers, it grew into one of the largest restaurant franchises in the world and greatly affects our society and how we eat our food.
These are opportunities because they are all options McDonalds can take advantage of in order to expand their company. By doing these, McDonalds will bring in more customers as these changes will attract consumers that are looking for a fast food restaurant that possess these
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
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).
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.
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 McDonald's Corporation is one of the world’s largest chain fast food restaurant, which is headquartered in the United States. It has expanded its business in 119 countries, including Hong Kong. The company mainly provides fast food such as hamburgers, french fries, chickens and soft drinks. McDonald’s started its business in Hong Kong in 1975. Now, the company already has 218 branches in Hong Kong. Our group would like to analyze how McDonald's Restaurants (HK) Ltd(McDonald's) maintained its sustainability of business in the past 38 years since it had already influenced lifestyle of most Hong Kong people and become part of the local culture of Hong Kong.