Mcdonalds

1. Introduction

McDonald’s Corporation is one of the worlds leading fast food chain restaurants. The first restaurant was opened in California in 1940 and was primarily called Dick and Mac M Donald. McDonald’s restaurants are nowadays found in 120 countries all over the world, and serve approximately 54 million customers each day (wikipedia, 2007). McDonalds is known to be both service and product industry. As a service provider, unlike other fast food restaurants, McDonald’s treats its customers appropriately, as if they are in a regular restaurant. In terms of product, it offers its customers a big variety of fast and tasty food for affordable price. This report will further analyze McDonalds marketing mix, also known as 4 P’s - product, price, place, promotion (Kotler et al, 2005).

Source :( thetimes 2005).

2. History of McDonald’s in Greece

First McDonald’s restaurant in Greece was open in 1991 in Athens in Syntagma Square. Today McDonald’s holds 48 restaurants in Greece, 37 from which are franchised and 11 are owned directly by the company. The corporation employs overall 1500 people (mcdonalds, 2006). Greek McDonald’s menus differ from American menus, since from the very begging because of the high competition in the fast food industry, the company offered the countries delicacies such as different types of salads, as well as interesting meals which are consisted of squid and/or octopus, which could be offered for the same price as some national meals, and were available alongside with hamburgers, chicken McNuggets, french fries, milkshakes, (greeklandscapes, 2006). The company has difficulties facing the competition, since, as mentioned above, the fast food industry is huge and it is hard even for a corporation such as McDonald’s to remain successful. Despite having low prices customers on the Balkans are known to stick to the products they are certain about, therefore it was hard at the begging for McDonald’s to break through the fast food market which offered various kinds of local gyros and suovlakis. Nowadays the company is one of the most famous and desirable places to eat, because it provides people with another taste, and always keeps its menus updated.

2. Marketing Mix

Marketing mix is defined as a composition of strategic marketing tools the company uses to deal with particular market and obtain reaction from the addressees. It consists of product, price, place and promotion, changes which influence the overall demand for company’s activities and its performance (Kotler et al, 2005).

3.1 Product

A product is defined as anything that can be offered in the market for purchase, use and consumption, and pleases customers’ needs and wants. McDonald’s products are identified as consumer products, since the food, the toys, and the internet access it offers are used by the customers rather than by other companies (Kotler et al, 2005). In order to present its products, McDonalds puts great importance on its menu. The company provides variety of different hamburgers, drinks, salads, and special offers with bargain prices, which are more attractive, than single meals. In such market as fast food industry, customers’ desires change on daily basis and in order to keep up with their requirements, McDonald’s changes its menus and meals frequently. In order to present this, Happy Meal can be taken as an example. It includes: burger of any kind a customer wants, refreshment also of customer’s choice, French fries, and of course the most “important” part of it is the toy, which is a surprise, and changes from week to week and always has other cartoon heroes. The company uses only high quality products. In terms of meat, McDonald’s suppliers’ conducts more than 2000 safety checks daily (mcdonalds.com, 2006). In terms of vegetables, McDonalds uses only those vegetables which are grown in the specific farms which cooperate with McDonald’s for several years. Packaging of these products plays an important role in the customer service. McDonald’s packages its food functionally, so consumers can carry it and can easily open the food at any place. 83% of the packaging that the company uses is made from paper or wood-fiber material. In order to improve its packaging McDonald’s has made five points which suppliers of the packaging material should follow. According to McDonald’s (2006) these are:

“1. Reducing unnecessary paper;

2. Favoring use of materials from renewable sources;

3. Reducing the total amount of material used in packaging;

4. Designing consumer packaging for its capacity to be recycled or composed;

5. Favoring materials and processes that minimize pollution; ”

Consequently, by caring about the packaging and nutrition McDonald’s cares about its customer commitment, since it is much harder to keep the customers than to find new ones. Furthermore, in terms of branding, the company uses a very simple and easily recognized named “McDonald’s”, and instantly everyone knows what the name stands for. The company’s products also have very simple names that can be easily remember by everyone.

3.2 Price

Price is the amount of money charged for specific product or service, and the service that the consumer receives for paying these goods (Kotler et al, 2005). For the consumer the product is not only a physical good, but also carries a psychological value in itself. This statement also applies for the food, in this case for McDonald’s, even thought majority of the world’s population has tried its products, if the company launches a new product (for example a new type of salad or hamburger) and it’s price is promotional, a lot of people will be attracted to it, since they are willing to try new tastes. Particularly here, the product is not critical point which will attract the customers, but it is rather its price, and by so doing the product provides- market penetration pricing (Kotler et al, 2005).Some marketers tend to put too high or too low prices on their products, and confuse their customers by that tend to because then they question the true value of the certain product (thetimes, 2005).