Marketing Strategy of McDonald's Corporation

McDonald's Corporation is in the fast food industry and

operates more than 24,000 restaurants in 111 countries worldwide. In the United States, it has 12,450 US outlets, most of them in stand-alone locations that generate a 42% share of the nation's fast-food hamburger business. Corporate communications states that a new McDonald's restaurant opens every 8 hours (McDonald's 1999).

Although traditionally quiet about its marketing strategy, the British web site, Biz Ed managed to get the company to address several critical issues. One of the issues concerned their marketing strategy. After stating that the first step in developing a marketing strategy is understanding the customers, enabling reaction to their changing needs and the changing dynamics of the market.

To this end the company conducts "several stages of in-depth customer research and audits of the McDonald's brand. The research involving both quantitative and qualitative research methods. This research tells us a lot about how McDonald's is perceived and about trends that are taking place in the market" (Biz Ed Online, 1999).

The company also conducts research into the local areas of the restaurants, into the general market environment, and into specific areas of our business, "children for example. We also have to have a thorough understanding of our competition" (Biz Ed Online, 1999).

The company considers its competition to be in three broad and basic areas:

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(among other things). Since the products and advertising benefit all franchises, these specific departments are centralized. Improve Customer Focus Customer focus refers to psychographic and demographic research to determine who the customer really is, what they want, and what will make them buy again and again. At corporate and regional levels, the company spends a great amount of money Today, more than 160,000 fast-food restaurants serve more than 50 million Americans daily. These businesses generate sales in excess of $65 billion annually. Why have fast-food chains expanded so rapidly during the last 40 years? The entire fast-food segment has a 32% share of the entire nation's restaurant tab. The fast food segment is further broken down into the following categories: Type Share Hamburger fast-food 48% Pizza 16.5% Chicken 12% Sandwiches 8% Sweets (donuts, cookies, ice cream) 8%) Mexican food 6% Seafood 1.5% McDonald's main strategy is to maintain competitive advantage in the saturated fast food industry. To achieve that, it has divided the main strategy into four sub-strategies: a) optimize speed, b) emphasize reliability, c) maximize service, and d) minimize costs. Within each of these strat

Category: Business - M