Marketing Strategies and Techniques of McDonald's

The provided report discusses the essential role of marketing in establishing McDonald's company in various countries. It highlights the importance of marketing functions, including market research, branding strategies, and the 4/7 P's of the marketing mix. The report also emphasizes the need for a detailed market research and a marketing plan to understand customers' positive and negative points, strengths, and weaknesses.

Marketing Essentials of
McDonald's

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................4
P1. Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function of McDonald's........................4
P2. Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context.........5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................7
P3. Marketing Mix of McDonald's- The 7 P's of marketing..................................................7
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................10
P4. Basic marketing plan for McDonald's...........................................................................10
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................13
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................14

Illustration Index
Illustration 1: Marketing Mix- The 7 P's of Marketing...................................................................9
Illustration 2: Marketing Plan........................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Marketing is a process which is used by the company to buy or sell their products in the
market in order to capture value from customers. It is one of the prime components of any
business to establish their name. It is generally used to satisfy the needs and wants of customers.
This report covers a detailed synopsis of the marketing function of McDonald's company. It is a
fast food venture known for its burgers, fries and shakes, which is currently running successfully
in so many countries. It is one of the largest restaurant chain, serving over millions of customers
daily across country. This report will also cover the topics like key roles and responsibilities of
the marketing function and how these marketing strategies are related to McDonald's. It will also
discuss about the ways which is applied by McDonald's for marketing mix and planning
processes to achieve their business objectives and also shows how to prepare a basic marketing
plan for McDonald's.
TASK 1
P1. Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function of McDonald's
Marketing function is key process which helps the company to identify and successfully
promotes their product in the market. It includes functions like, market research, producing a
marketing plan, and product development, as well as strategically overseeing advertising,
promotion, distribution, customer service and public relations. All these factors are interrelated
with each other and has to be work properly. Marketing generally identifies customers demand
and tries to solve it as soon as possible. Planning a strategy is the basic step in marketing. It plays
a significant role in developing any business. To achieve their objectives, McDonald's needs to
start flexible techniques which can adjust with the customer's perception and demand. There are
different roles and responsibilities of the marketing functions of McDonald's to maintain the
brand name in the market. Marketing team of McDonald's ensures that every customer they are
serving is happy with their services and food provided to them (Armstrong, G. and et.al, 2015).
For this the marketing team of McDonald's segments their customers into different groups on the
basis of demographic, geographic and psycho graphic variables in the market and also keeping in
mind the changing taste and preferences of the customers.
Due to rapid change in consumption pattern, customer's buying behavior and rise in
income level, McDonald's has started using differentiated targeting strategy to overcome the
issues of customer's needs. McDonald's tries to come up with new products in every short period

in order to attract customers especially children as they are more likely to eat fast food as
compared to their parents. McDonald's has low infrastructure cost as most of their business is
being franchised by other companies. This helps them to increase profitability. Another
marketing strategy to popular their brand name in the market is by tie-ups and sponsorship's with
well known organizations like, FIFA, Olympics which helped the company to increase their
international market in the world. McDonald's employees are dedicated in giving high quality
food and services to their customers. For a good marketing functions, several factors are
included, such as,
 Gathering and analyzing the market information of interest: Before starting anything,
proper information should there of the market.
 Product designing and developments: McDonald's should give efforts in their product
designing and its development.
 Market Planning: Planning of all the required thing is necessary.
 Packaging and Labeling: They should occasionally come up with new and interesting
packaging and labeling of their product to attract the customers.
 Branding: Its most important for company to have positive branding among their
customer. This will ensure that they are going smoothly in the market.
 Customer Support Service: It includes the feedback and complaints coming from the
customers side. They have to solve all these issue in time as early as possible for them.
 Promotion: For branding the name, different promotional events has to be organized by
McDonald's in order to aware the public about their newly launched services and
discounts and offer available for them.
 Storage and Warehouse: This is generally used keep the raw material of company. Need
for storage is also important to meet the demand in case of emergency and to avoid
unnecessary delays in delivering the product to customers.
P2. Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context
The marketing functions includes various factors like, strategy management, marketing
research, sales support system, product developments, finance team, distribution systems, human
resource department, etc. All these have different roles and responsibilities which helps to
promote growth and development of the company. There is a close relation between marketing
functions with other organizational functions in the company. From the results or outcomes from

the marketing research, McDonald's can plan a strategy according to them (Babin, B.J. and
Zikmund, W.G. 2015).
They can understand positive and negative points of the company and can apply several
measures to resolve these issues. It's easy to know its strength and weakness, coming threats
from the competitors and new opportunities they can have from the market. All of these can be
achieved by the marketing strategy. Marketing functions generally include the concept of current
and future trends in the market, what their customers are demanding and what are their food
preferences, etc. The marketing department of McDonald's plans and execute various methods
involving pricing, promotion, distribution, sales, etc. which helps to compliment the target
customers of the company. The roles and responsibilities of marketing are explained below:
 Market Research: This is the initial step which is taken by the company and considered to
be a major role in the marketing. Before planning or applying any strategy in the market,
proper research has to be done by company. This research consists of topics like
customer's interests, pricing and quality of the product, competitors profile analysis, etc.
in order to deliver the best product and services of the company in the market.
 Market strategies: The team of McDonald's tries to recognize needs and requirements of
the targeted customers and provide products and services accordingly. These strategies
help to main an equilibrium between the company's objectives and opportunities in the
existing market (Baker, M.J. 2014.).
 Market segmentation: McDonald's has segmented their customers into different groups
on the basis of age, taste preferences, family, etc. This helps them to serve better service
and produce new and unique food items for them.
 Brand Equity: In today's world, customers tends to attract towards different brand which
they like or prefer most. To build trust in their customer is the main motto of
McDonald's. By doing this, it ensures the business to increase their sales volume and
revenue.
A proper marketing function helps to determine the strength and weakness of the
company. McDonald's is the number one fast food chain in the world which serves different food
items to their customers like, burgers which was the main food items in the past but today it has
many options available in their menu for example, fries, cold drinks, wraps, ice creams, etc. this

helps the company to gain popularity among children and youngsters. Along with this they also
have weakness which the company is working on to overcome it as soon as possible.
They are as follows- McDonald's failed to offer pizza because they are less able to
compete with pizza fast food chains. Company has to spend more money and time to train their
employees. One of the most famous strategies applied by the company was opening of “Happy
Meal” in their menu in the 1970's. This strategy gained a huge popularity among the children and
still searching new approaches to grab the attention of the customers towards them. The seven
core functions of the marketing department of McDonald's are- their pricing of products they are
serving, production or service management, distribution of sales, financing, marketing
management, selling and last promotion of the company (Brotspies, H. and Weinstein, A. 2017).
TASK 2
P3. Marketing Mix of McDonald's- The 7 P's of marketing
Marketing mix is defined as a set of different factors or tactics which a company applies
to promote its brand or product or service into the market. Marketing mix generally consists of 7
P's that are- product, price, place, promotion, process, people, and last is physical evidence.
Explained below are the 7 P's of marketing mix of McDonald's and company's business and
marketing strategies.
 Product: It refers to the different products which the company is serving to their
customers to satisfy their needs and demands. It primarily consists of items such as
burgers, fries, chicken & sandwiches, snacks & sides, desserts & shakes, ice creams, and
soft drinks. They also provide a variety of options to them which includes both vegetarian
and non vegetarian snakes. They have a specialty in having different varieties of burger
like cheese burgers, chicken burgers, McEgg burger, etc. They have also come up with
“meal” options into their menu which includes burger, fries and a soft drink at cheaper
rates (Ceil, C. 2017).
 Price: This refers to the pricing techniques of the McDonald company's product and
services they are delivering. McDonald's follows cost leadership business strategy to set
the prices of the product. The main objective of the McDonald's each individual
restaurant is to provide food items at a very moderate rate which can be easily affordable
by all group of customers. Prices set by McDonald's is very different from their
competitor's pricing rate which is much cheaper. McDonald's set their product's prices

with a demand based methodology which does not prescribe pricing to their franchisees
as they set their own price to the products.
 Place: It is the area where the organization decides to operate. McDonald's outlets are
evenly spread throughout the world. The main aim of them is that the customer can easily
access that place. McDonald's has unique distribution strategy in different countries like
it provide home delivery in some countries. Many outlets are open 24 hours a day which
makes customer to enjoy their services at any time they want to. All these are different
measures applied by McDonald's to attract customers towards them (Groucutt, J. and
Hopkins, C. 2015).
 Promotion: It is a process through which the company communicate with their customer
directly or indirectly in order to understand their requirements and demands. Different
promotional activities are organized by the company to aware the customers about their
new products and about their discounts and offers which are currently available for them.
It can be done through various ways such as, advertising in TV, radio station, newspaper,
magazines, etc, organizing different events in the particular area. In today's generation
social media plays a huge in promoting the brand name. It can be done through posting
ads in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Now-a-days people prefer social media over
other options. Other than that, company uses different sales technique for example, if a
customer buys 6 burgers along with cold drinks that he/she is will get an ice cream for
free (The Marketing Mix 4P’s and 7P’s Explained. 2016).
 Process: It is a process which is generally accounts the different activities undertaking by
the company to deliver their services to customers. A good process ensures that company
is saving their time and money by increasing their staff member's efficiency. They should
maintain their standard of service. McDonald's undertake several activities to provide a
better environment to their customers for example, the food prepared in McDonald's are
clearly visible to their customers. They can see how their order is being prepared. Other
factors which are included in this are how comfortable the customer is in placing order,
how much time does it take to deliver and the staff member is treating them (Lanier, P.
and Lanier, M. 2017).
 People: People here refers to the staff member and employees who are working in the
McDonald's company. These are the employees working at store, managers who manage

all the staff members, etc. In UK, approx 97,000 people work in McDonald's. 70% of the
McDonald's stores are owned by local women and businessman. If the staff of
McDonald's is not happy than it can not deliver a good service to its customers. So its
very important for the company to keep their people happy in order to increase their
productivity and profit margin.
 Physical Evidence: This is the last element in the marketing mix of McDonald's
company. It refers to everything what the customer sees when he/she is interacting with
the company. Physical evidence includes factors like, store ambiance where the product
is being delivered to them, interior designing of the store, packaging and company's
branding in the market. It gives a great impact of impression on customer's mind.
McDonald's also keeps in mind the fact that it is mostly popular among children, hence
providing a comfortable and fun loving environment to them (Lilly, M.C. 2014).
All these factors are included in the marketing mix of McDonald's marketing functions
which the company uses to stay in the market in top places and helps to expand their business
Illustration 1: Marketing Mix- The 7 P's of Marketing
Source: The Marketing Mix, 2017

more in other countries as well. To successfully plan all these elements in upgrading their
business, proper research has to be done by the marketing team of the McDonald's company.
They should keep their focus on their targeted customers to achieve their goal or objective which
is to stay in the top position in the market (Marketing Mix of McDonald's. 2017).
TASK 3
P4. Basic marketing plan for McDonald's
A marketing plan can be defined as an overall business plan of the company which
includes the future plans as well. It is a type of plan that outlines the advertising and marketing
efforts which the company is planning to execute in the future. A good marketing plan covers
different factors in it, for example, it should have market strategy, situation analysis of the
market, sales forecast and expense budget of the company. McDonald's has become the biggest
fast food chain in the coming years so it has to maintain the strong brand name in the market
(Malhotra, N.K. 2015). For this a good marketing plan is required to achieve this. Company
spends approx $1 billion on training their staff members. They have also given the franchises
which are owned by others. Now McDonald's need to expand their business in new country, a
marketing plan will be prepared which covers all the details and information required by them to
execute their plan into action. The basic marketing plan includes, company's mission and vision,
its marketing auditing and SWOT analysis, their marketing objectives and strategies and their
overall budget.

These are the following steps in the marketing plan:
 Mission and Vision: This is done to set goals for the company. What exactly company
wants to plan. Company's mission is to provide customer friendly place where they can
come, eat and enjoy their meal. Try to provide better services to their customers.
McDonald's Vision is to always provide the best and quality food. McDonald's believes
that customer's feedback is one such thing which always guarantees the product's success
in the market. So its marketing strategies are planned according to them. McDonald's
being internationally famous, it becomes its duty to make their clients happy (McDonald,
M. and Wilson, H. 2016).
 SWOT analysis: This analysis is done to identify McDonald's strength, weakness, their
threats and opportunities. Talking about the strength of the company, it's the leading
company in the fast food chain restaurant. It has a strong brand name which makes it
popular in the market. They have good amount of resources available. Approx 80% of the
restaurant is owned by independent franchises. In weakness, it has limited product
diversification, which affects its business. There is a negative publicity of their food in
the market. Their employees turn over is very high and the company has to spend more
money on them. The food brand has highly affected the eating habits of the customers
specially among children and youngsters (Perreault, W.D., Cannon, J.P. and McCarthy,
E.J. 2015).
Illustration 2: Marketing Plan
Source: Marketing Plan, 2016

There is a great opportunity in front of them like, they can offer optional food items
which are gluten and peanut free. There is a huge opportunity to expand their business in the
Middle eastern region. Other than this there are threats also which the company should keep in
mind. They have to face a lot of competition from their competitors. To solve these issues they
have to be very dedicated towards their work. They have to boost their staff members to work
hard in order to compete with them. They should have knowledge about what are the different
strategies applied by their rivalry companies like, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. Because all these also has
a great impact on people. There food quality is very good like McDonald's. So all these factors
affect the business strategies of McDonald's.
 Marketing Objectives and strategies: To expand their business, McDonald's has to do a
market research which helps them to understand people's choices and preferences on food
items. Analyzing all the eating habits of them they can provide food products which can
be a quick and solution to their hunger. Implementing these changes will increase their
chance to successfully launch their outlet and become popular in no time. All these
strategies will help to forecast the expected result and can create alternative plans in case
they require. Their mission is to increase their sales in the coming year (Philip, K., 2014).
 Market segmentation: It is a process used to segment customers on the basis of age group,
income, family size, food preferences, etc. This will help to concentrate company on their
targeted customer to achieve their goal. The food products of McDonald's can be a good
option for the people, who are busy in their work life, as they will quickly get their order
done which will save a lot of time. McDonald's tries to have easy accessibility of their
outlet.
 Planning Budget: To successfully execute a marketing plan, company needs to have
enough budget in their account. In general, company need a minimum of $500,000 of
non-borrowed personal resources to open a McDonald's franchise in other countries. To
manage all these factors in limited amount of resources is very important for the
company's financial team (Tomczak, T., Reinecke, S. and Kuss, A. 2018).

CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that marketing plays an essential role in the
establishment of McDonald's company in different countries. It has also explained the key roles
and responsibilities of the marketing functions and how they are important to the company
maintain the brand image in the market. It also further explains that how the different marketing
mixing techniques, the 7 P's of the marketing mix is important for McDonald's to carry out their
business. To successfully expand their business McDonald's need to do a detailed market
research of their targeted customers and according to that research they should make a marketing
plan which will help them to understand their positive and negative points. From the above, it
also helps to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and how to over come from these issues is
also mentioned in it.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong, G. and et.al, 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Babin, B.J. and Zikmund, W.G., 2015. Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.
Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Brotspies, H. and Weinstein, A., 2017. Rethinking business segmentation: a conceptual model
and strategic insights. Journal of Strategic Marketing. pp.1-13.
Ceil, C., 2017. Service Quality and Branding Strategies at McDonalds.
Groucutt, J. and Hopkins, C., 2015. Marketing. Palgrave Macmillan.
Lanier, P. and Lanier, M., 2017. Marketing Essentials for Independent Lodgings.
Lilly, M.C., 2014. Content marketing essentials for small business. London: Create Space
Independent Publishing Platform.
Malhotra, N.K., 2015. Essentials of marketing research: A hands-on orientation. Essex: Pearson.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. The Major Elements of Marketing. Marketing Plans 8e:
How to Prepare Them, How to Profit from Them.
McDONALD, M.A.L.C.O.L.M., 2016. Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice. In
The marketing book. pp. 108-142. Routledge.
Perreault, W.D., Cannon, J.P. and McCarthy, E.J., 2015. Essentials of marketing: Amarketing
strategy planning approach.
Philip, K., 2014. Marketing Essentials. A brief course: Translated from English.
Moscow:“Williams” Publishing House. 496.
Tomczak, T., Reinecke, S. and Kuss, A., 2018. Introduction. In Strategic Marketing.pp. 1-18.
Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Online
Marketing Mix of McDonald's. 2017. Available through:
<https://www.howandwhat.net/marketing-mix-mcdonalds-mcdonalds-marketing-mix/>
The Marketing Mix 4P’s and 7P’s Explained. 2016. Available through:
<http://marketingmix.co.uk/>