BK's Strategic Shift: Empowering Employees for Innovative Product Development

This assignment requires a strategic analysis of Burger King (BK) focusing on its present strategy and exploring opportunities to involve employees in making decisions about new product development. The goal is to foster unique and innovative products, thereby sustaining BK's competitive position in the industry. Utilize the provided references, including books, journals, and online resources, to support your analysis.

Report

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Business is considered as an organization legal entity that consists of workers who share
common motives towards accomplishment of organizational goal. In UK, there are various
industries who have achieved a major growth and development in recent years (Min and Min,
2013). Fast food service sector is one of the fastest growing industry in which there are various
organizations like Burger king, McDonald's, KFC, Wendy's and Subway etc. having business
operations across the countries. Present report is based on the analysis of Burger King as major
competitor of other restaurants and its positioning to recognised its strategies of maintaining
competitive advantage in service sector. Burger King is an American global chain of Ham
burger fast food restaurants. In recent years, company has achieved high revenue in their
business and operations. Further, organization also achieved its objective of increasing market
share in industry as compared to competitors brands. Company with high growth rate has
dominated the market of rivals by increasing diversified customers base. For increasing sales and
profitability, company is mainly focused on achievement of customers satisfaction by providing
quality of products and services to the customers at lowest possible prices. Continuous
innovation in products and services differentiate the brand from its competitors like McDonald's.
MAIN BODY
Continuous increasing productivity of service sector largely determined a ability of
nation to compete in present global economy. Enterprises in this sector is mainly responsible for
providing growth and increasing productivity of its enterprise (Gayle and Luo, 2015). In this,
Burger king is global chain of fast food hamburger restaurants, burger king worldwide, has been
reporting improved comparable store sales across all four regions for the last few quarters with
an annual growth of 2% growth in sales in its first fiscal quarter. Company is a restaurants
industries is the high competitive in the developed markets (Shakhshir, 2014). In US and other
international markets in Asia pacific and Europe quick service restaurants and also the fast casual
restaurants have also gained each other on the basis of products, quality, service, menu price and
location. Burger King has also managed to maintain its brand appeal within the customers,
competing markets against various big brands like McDonald's and Wendy's. One of the major
competitor of brand in fast food industry is McDonald's which has always and continuously been
a large scale company and achieved a great customers responses in the market as compared to
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competitor (Grant, 2016). For achieving the market share and increasing the brand recognition
each firm has continuous to push its international presence, although with the mixed outcomes.
After a disappointment start to the year 21st century Burger king's company has considered that
McDonald's is their competitor in market who have applied similar strategies and started
providing similar products with their own brand and kept the lowest prices to sustain their high
competitive position in market. After this, company has conducted an effective market research
in order to analyse the changes in customers preferences and competitive analysis for
development of effective business case study. In order to increase its market share and gaining
competitive advantage over rivals, company has applied strategy of rebranding and repackaging
of its existing products to help out its customers. One of the major part of its revival strategies is
a direct challenge to McDonald's products. In 2014, Company introduced its new products Big
king Sandwich which was very different from the McDonald's products named McRib sandwich
and its has kept competitive prices for its products in order to provide influence on their
consumers behaviour. The main competition position of organisation has been identified was its
excellent marketing of products and service. Products and cost differentiation strategy have been
used by Burger king so that they will maintain competitive advantage of McDonald's.
Strategic business positioning is termed as undertaking different activities than your
competitors are doing the same activities differently. It is the way through which the Burger king
has become superior performer in the fast food industry. Company have also determined that
their positioning is based on the customer base (Harrington, Ottenbacher and Fauser, 2017).
Study of Burger market has determined that company is increasing its products and service in
order to influence the diversified customers base. For example: Burger king focuses on young
adults males as their target customers. There strategy and positioning is to satisfy this sector of
the market. They base their positioning in order to satisfy the older and health conscious
individuals. After simplification of things down it turns out there are only tow basic types of
positioning, low cost or differentiation. Further, this is how the Burger king has selected to serve
their diversified customers base and how the customers have guided company to operate (Vu and
et.al., 2012). Burger king has made itself to be a family friendly low cost restaurants in the fast
food business. Company has a wide scope for customers base and a low cost strategy. In recent
years, they have intended to broaden their scope to appeal more consumers. Due to decline in
sale company has started to make their menu more healthy option. They always try to keep their
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target market wide to young adult male customer and families and focused on reducing the
delivery time and cutting the cost of food. Burger king undertakes things differently that its
competitors like McDonald's and Wendy's through marketing to their family market whereas its
competitor market to wide base in some cases or to different generations like marketing to young
adults. Burger king has positioned itself on the forefront of their unique products and fast food
technology along with setting out standards for the rest of the industry.
Further, major aspect of company's competitive position is considered as its product
quality, food freshness, food safety, secure supply chain, control on raw materials, product
controls, food safety at restaurant level, service quality, training, communication, inspection and
environment etc. Burger king has achieved high competitive position due to their high products
quality as they take precaution in order to be sure that food will remain safe and procedures that
they apply in restaurants to prepare food are strict and needs to be followed (Joseph, 2012).
Freshness of food is also major criteria to achieve high competitive position in market. BKC
have developed a new and unique concept called “Made fresh only for you” through which they
ensure that each consumer will be served the freshest product possible. Moreover, company has
also developed supply quality assurance team which uses the multiple along with the overlapping
controls which is comprehensive food safety program, for overseeing its suppliers and validating
their compliance and performance (Yuece, 2012). Management of BKC selects its suppliers on
the basis of their competencies in order to comply with their policies. They also have strong
emphasis on the quality of ingredients it uses. Further, to maintain high competitive position,
BKC makes continuous improvement in their products through seeking ways to raise the
nutrition in their food. The ways that organisation used is reduced the level of salt and saturated
fats in its core menu items. Establishment of training programs is also major aspect of
organisation which has provided them competitive advantage of increasing competencies of their
human resource and resulted in significant effects in the quality (Shelley, 2013). Service quality
is most important aspect that provides high competitive position to organisation in market. SQ of
burger king is unique as it based on expectation of its target consumers and comparisons with
McDonald's. Along with this, they have also provided an healthy and pleasant climate which has
carried out good performance of the employees and they have also applied open communication
policies and staff feels no barrier to prevent their communication with the manager.
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Burger king was bale to recover the market by introducing the big king sandwich, two
patties, three buns and special sauce. This made them compete with McDonald's Therefore, its
value proposition has increased. They are providing similar products but at cheaper rate. They
have created new products in the menu with existing resources (ENSARİ,, 2017). With this they
have done product innovation, this had helped them to retain its customers by providing new
variety in food items. They have started various promotion strategies like providing customers
two for $5 sandwich deal. Also, they have raised the prices of some food items in menu. By
analysing the change in taste and preference of customers they have made changes in menu.
Also, they are now implementing the strategy of market and product development. This has
enabled them to again build a strong brand image in the market. With this they are able to
redevelop themselves. They brought up the product which were completely different from
McDonald's. They created salads, smoothies, etc. that was a very different concept. This
provided customers an extra value for product. Also, it helped BK to provide an extra benefit to
customer by giving them discounts and offers on these things to try them out. Burger king used
them a tool to attract customers. In this way they responded to customer demand and fulfilled
them. Furthermore, customers were also attracted as they got new concept to try out. In this way
BK sales got increased and profits raised. Thus, leading them to gain market share and compete
with other fast food companies (Genoveva, and Siam, 2017).
In recent years' burger king is able to generate a large amount of revenue through various
business practices. They are taking more royalty from franchise as percentage of sales made by
them. Also, they gain by leasing out properties to franchises. Moreover, they are generating
revenue from restaurants that are owned by companies. They are now effectively marketing their
products through social media and their outlets. Moreover, with its recent change in menu they
have created and developed new products according to customer demands. Now they are more
focused on customer satisfaction. Also, many markets have been covered by them to expand
business. This has helped them to attract new customers . By making changes in entire business
operations and strategies they are now able to gain more customers and sales. Also, they have
modified their advertising campaigns which has made a great impact in the market. Also, they
have controlled their cost by taking raw materials from third parties. The marketing strategy
followed by them is BCG matrix. This has helped them to analyse the market and customers.
With this they are developing products to meet the needs of customers. Hence, they are
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providing a range of variety in food items and at cheap cost. Also, discounts and other benefits
are given by them to new customers. Therefore, its position is now changed and made them a
fast food chain restaurant (Lutz, 2015).
CONCLUSION
From the above analysis, it is concluded that Burger King has been emerged as major
competitor for organisation in fast food industry and has adopted various measures to a high
competitive position in market. In order to increase its market share as compared to McDonald's,
it has adopted a revival or differentiation strategy in order to gain competitive advantage by
producing unique fast food products like Big king sandwich. Along with this, BKC has also
provided more emphasis on increasing the food and service quality, supply chain and increasing
competencies of their employees nu providing training. Strategic business positioning is termed
as undertaking different activities than your competitors are doing the same activities differently.
It is the way through which the Burger king has become superior performer in the fast food
industry. Company have also determined that their positioning is based on the customer base.
Further, in order to increase the profitability and market position, the Burger needs to focus on
their present strategy and also provide opportunities to their employees of participating in
making decision on new product development and share ideas with so that unique and innovative
products can be developed to sustain competitive position in industry.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
ENSARİ, M.Ş., 2017. SMALL/MEDIUM SIZED ENTERPRISES AND COMPETITORS. How
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (Smes) Can Be Competitive: An Environmental
Approach, 5, p.107.
Gayle, P.G. and Luo, Z., 2015. Choosing between Order‐of‐Entry Assumptions in Empirical
Entry Models: Evidence from Competition between Burger King and McDonald's
Restaurant Outlets. The Journal of Industrial Economics. 63(1). pp.129-151.
Genoveva, G. and Siam, S.T., 2017. Analysis of Marketing Strategy and Competitive Advantage.
International Journal of Economic Perspectives. 11(1). pp.1571-1579.
Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.
Harrington, R.J., Ottenbacher, M.C. and Fauser, S., 2017. QSR brand value: Marketing mix
dimensions among McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway and Starbucks. International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 29(1). pp.551-570.
Joseph, L., 2012. Similarities between competitors and the implications for location strategies.
Geospatial Technologies and Advancing Geographic Decision Making: Issues and Trends:
Issues and Trends, p.132.
Min, H. and Min, H., 2013. Cross-cultural competitive benchmarking of fast-food restaurant
services. Benchmarking: An International Journal. 20(2). pp.212-232.
Shakhshir, G., 2014. Positioning strategies development. The Annals Of The University Of
Oradea. 977. pp.416-437.
Shelley, K.M., 2013. Five Years after Leegin, Can Franchisors Safely Establish Resale Price
Maintenance Programs. Int'l J. Franchising L.. 11. p.37.
Vu and et.al., 2012. Burger King: Changing or Imitating?.
Yuece, I., 2012. SWOT Analysis of McDonald’s and Derivation of Appropriate Strategies.
Online:
Lutz, A., 2015. “Burger King's secret to becoming the most successful fast food chain”. [Online].
Available through:<https://www.businessinsider.in/Burger-Kings-secret-to-becoming-the-
most-successful-fast-food-chain/articleshow/47518298.cms>
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