Free Why We Chose McDonald’s Essay Sample

Despite increasing debates and concern on American food culture, McDonald’s still remain a fast food store of choice for most Americans. In fact, McDonald’s has been a target of critics over its records in regard to the health of the people, its role in environmental conservation and labour record. However, despite these concerns, the statistics are humbling and Americans are increasingly becoming a fast food nation with love for McDonalds’ fast food products.  According to Schlosser (2009), “in the year 2011, Americans will spend over $110 billion on fast food more than they'll spend on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and recorded music combined and every day about one quarter of the U.S. population eats fast food.” As the dominant force in fast food market, a greater percentage of these billions will end up with McDonald’s. This essay seeks to examine the determining factors for the preference of Macdonald’s menu. It seeks to provide a succinct analysis of the core reasons behind preference for the McDonald’s menu.

Most Americans prefer the McDonald’s menu because of its aggressive advertising campaigns and strategic marketing. The marketing concept adopted by McDonald employs the most critical key in brand development by striving to build a company around satisfaction of customer needs. The advertising campaign behind McDonald focuses on product positing, market differentiation and market segmentation. McDonald employs a wholly strategic approach to advertising by taking cognizance of the aspects related to the delivery of their products as this does have a lot of influence on customer perceptions about its products.

Regardless of the industry, businesses have the responsibility to come up with strategies that make it easy for customers to not only know about their goods and services, but also have the desire to purchase them (Fukuda, 2003). This is not an easy feat to accomplish due to several challenges that businesses have to contend with. McDonald has effectively employed strategic marketing approaches to address the issues of stiff competition from other businesses in the same industry, economic problems that hinder the customers’ willingness to buy its products, and the presence of several distractions which have the potential to come in between the customer and the message that is being sent from the company marketing its products. These are just some of the challenges that McDonald has effectively addressed to achieve competitive edge among competitors and win the greater American population. 

The McDonald’s products are highly advertised in the electronic media, newspapers, billboards, brochures, exhibitions and word of mouth. This kind of multi-channel advertising strategy ensures successful product adoption and quick product awareness among customers. The application of different colours in its large indoor or outdoor playgrounds provides a perfect opportunity for McDonald to reach the children segment of the market. The continuous improvement of its playground avails ideal areas for children’s outings and recreation.

In addition to strategic marketing, aggressive advertisement and market differentiation, McDonald remains a preferred choice of fast food outlet because of effective brand positioning of its products. These include finding a market niche, carrying out adequate research on the prospects of the product, and shifting away from a generalist position. Furthermore, strong brand mixes with other food products manufactured by McDonald has enhanced brand positioning of its products. This is because strong brand mixes and matches helps perform a number of brand related functions, including but not limited to the enhancement or reinforcement of consumers awareness of brands and its image, or even the legal and competitive protection of a brand. The company has laid strong product positioning objectives, which defines the expected achievements over a given period. These objectives include; creation of market awareness about the product to penetrate both the local market and the international markets.

McDonald achieves market segments and targets through pricing strategy. The pricing strategy is an important attribute and should ideally be focused on the pursuit of a strategy that is based on customers’ perception of value. As has been noted in both academic and empirical literature, majority of organizations are faced with the problems of finding the right blends between the attributes of products quality, design, features, costs and prices. As noted by Fukuda, K. (2003), many managers are usually not averse to how price can and should relate to what customers think of a product and therefore either charge too much or too little for a product. The pricing strategy of McDonald products such as hamburgers, chicken, breakfast items, cheeseburgers, soft drinks, shakes, French-fries and desserts have been instituted and well positioned within the tenets of occupying particular niches in the customer’s minds.  For $ 3.50, a customer has a Big Mac in New York City. Even though prices of McDonald products vary from place to place, they are pocket friendly in comparison to other fast food companies.  Most Americans purchase McDonald’s fast food products because of the company’s success in creating points of parity in those areas where competitors are trying to find an advantage while at the same time creating points of difference to achieve advantages over competitors in different areas.

In conclusion, brand loyalty towards McDonald’s fast food products is because of a mix of strategies that have enhanced the preference of its brands. This is mainly because of its ability to deliver the benefits that customers truly desire.  McDonald’s fast food products encompass the collection of attributes, brand image, services, and the many other tangible and intangible factors that create an attractive whole that customers truly desire and identify with.

 

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