Mcdonald's Marketing Strategy

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Introduction In 1940 Dick and Mac McDonald opened McDonalds Bar-B-Q restaurant in California, later they shut down their restaurant and reopened it as a self service drive in restaurant where the staple of the menu was their 15cent hamburger. The golden arches that is known as McDonald’s today is as everyone would expect, the leading global food service retailer and quick-service restaurant brand in the world. McDonald's Corporation controls and franchises McDonald's restaurants. McDonald’s has more than 36,000 restaurants with about 1.9 million people working for McDonalds and its franchise helping to serve about 69 million people in more than 119 countries each. Its global system consists of both company-owned and franchised McDonald’s restaurants(http://news.mcdonalds.com/,…show more content…
To understand how McDonald’s does this we investigated how marketing in the US, the home of McDonald’s, differs with that in Japan. With America being their largest consumers, McDonald’s main focus is clearly the US where they invest most of their money into trialing new products and innovations. The McDonalds brand has been built through strategic marketing segmentation. It is clear they address the needs, wants and tastes of the consumers as well as keeping their marketing up to date, acknowledging the changing customer needs and demands. McDonald’s adjusts its menu in their restaurants all over the world to suit the different countries and respect their cultural differences and of course every country has its own policy of developing food menu items which they have to abide by. It is obvious McDonald’s are no stranger to experimentation, they often add or take away foods from a menu in order to keep up with the latest trends and local popularity. McDonald’s in Japan is similar to that in the US for instance because like in the US, hamburgers are one of the key products in their business. However, in Japan for example as well as the regular menus you would find in the US such as Bigu Maku (Big Mac), Daburu Cheezu Baagaa (Double Cheese Burger), Kuwota Paunda Wizu Cheezu (Quarter Pounder with…show more content…
The McDonald’s name for example is adjusted for the katakana, which is the Japanese script for foreign words. In Japan rather than referring to it as McDonald’s they instead call it ‘Makudonarudo’, (マクドナルド), which is far easier and more attractive for the people in Japan to say (Darren Howard,2014). As well as the name being altered the food varies in more ways than just different burgers and a different, unique combination of flavours, in addition to this the size of fries and drinks are far smaller than the ones in the US and burgers are also a bit smaller too. The reduction in size of the meals is an alteration in order to suit the eating habits of the Japanese. No matter what country around the world McDonalds exports to it always makes sure that the correct sizes of foods before sending out to its international target markets. You have to admire the food chains incredible ability to stay true to their original brand idea, meaning, format and identity throughout all their restaurants around the world whilst adjusting and catering to local tastes, it’s no wonder that McDonald’s is by far the most popular restaurant around the world. It is clear that McDonald’s main aim is to preserve a strong enough brand that can be instantly identifiable all around the globe. Globalization
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