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Since Richard and Maurice McDonald founded in 1948, McDonald's has grown from a small restaurant in California into one of the most recognized brands in the world with a chain of outlets that spans the globe. For over 50 years, McDonald's defined the fast food industry while indelibly etching its golden arches logo on the face of both American and global culture through such icons as character Ronald McDonald and the Big Mac sandwich. Millions of people started their very first jobs at McDonalds while even more began to have their eating habits redefined by the chain. Concepts like the drive-thru window were introduced along with the Happy Meal for children in order to provide a fast, affordable, and enjoyable dining. Ray Kroc, saleman that brung his marketing skill, that gave a new meaning to the business of fastfoods. He exploited McDonald successful and came up with a mix that spread throughtout the US.

Mcdonald's have more than 30,000 restaurants in over 119 countries. In 2002, they had served over a 16 billion customers and still counting. McDonald's Marks 4th Consecutive Year of Strong Global Comparable Sales. (www.mcdonalds.com) Global comparable sales rose 7.2% in December, on top of a 5.0% increase achieved for December 2005. Global comparable sales for the fourth quarter were at 6.3% and 5.7%, respectively. While in the US comparable sales - up 6.9% for the month, 5.9% for the fourth quarter and 5.2% for the year.

Franchise, it was until Ray Kroc seen that the key was in opening rapid expanision of the company. Today, there are over 70

SWOT ANALYSIS:

Strengths: The biggest strength that the case study focused on was strategy. Palm employed a judo strategy starting with the "puppy-dog ploy" (Yoffie, 2001, p. 56). This strategy allowed Palm to stay in business and stay undetected as a threat to their competition, especially Microsoft, for quite some time. Yoffie (2001) stated that strength of Palm was their "tightly integrated software and hardware design" (p. 59). Because they were so integrated, they were allowed to stay simple and move faster which was a definite strength.

Weaknesses: Ironically, their strategy also seems to be their biggest weakness. As Yoffie (2001) said, "By investing over time in specific skills and strengths, you create opportunities that perceptive rivals can exploit. In other words, you risk becoming the target of another and possibly better judo strategist" (p. 62). Another weakness was the slowing pace of innovation and the lack of coordination between marketing and production at Palm. Marketing announced the anticipated release of the m500 and m505 which caused a decrease in demand of Palm's older products (Yoffie, 2001, p. 62).

Opportunities: Palm had plenty of opportunities; the biggest of course was to develop models to satisfy the growing demand for hand held computing capabilities. After time, Palm had further opportunities to extend the Palm brand (Yoffie, 2001). They did take some of these opportunities to form alliances with other companies and expand their offerings in the market.

Threats: The biggest threat to Palm was always competition. Their biggest competitor, Microsoft, had much more money to allocate to competing against them. They also had a very trusted and recognized name in the computing world. More recently they also have a threat from Handspring, which is the only company, as of 2001, to take significant market share from Palm (Yoffie, 2001, p. 63).

STRATEGY USED:

Palm employed a judo strategy focusing on movement. They started off with the "puppy-dog ploy" to keep themselves under the radar of their competition while building up market share. They then focused on movement to help "define the competitive space" and force Microsoft to compete in a new arena. The last part of their movement strategy was to "follow through fast" to capitalize on their initial advantage and keep a continuous attack (Yoffie, 2001, p. 56). This strategy was highly successful for Palm allowing them to keep the lead spot in the market for six years until Handspring came around. It also allowed them to continually beat out their competition from Microsoft despite the fact that Microsoft is an industry giant.

Judo strategy lends itself to small companies that are trying to break into a market that is "dominated by a large incumbent" (Yoffie, 2001, p. 56). They can use this strategy to be undetected as a threat to the larger company, and then further use it to turn the competitor's strengths into "strategic liabilities" (Yoffie, 2001, p. 56). As the company grows however, the strategy does have potential to become a weakness. As previously mentioned, Yoffie (2001) said, "By investing over time in specific skills and strengths, you create opportunities that perceptive rivals can exploit. In other words, you risk becoming the target of another and possibly better judo strategist" (p. 63). This risk is the biggest weakness of the judo strategy.