Managing within a Competitive Environment Part 01

This article discusses managing within a competitive environment with McDonald's as a case study. It covers stakeholder groups, loyalty programs, and needs met. The article also highlights the importance of modifying policies, products, and services to meet customer needs and gain a competitive advantage.

Slide 1
Managing within a
Competitive
Environment

Table of Contents
Slide 2-INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................3
Slide 3- Background information on McDonald's Key stakeholders..............................................3
Slide 4- McDonald's Loyalty Programmes.....................................................................................3
Slide 5-McDonald's rewards...........................................................................................................3
Slide 6- McDonald's: identify the stakeholders groups as well as explain their relationship with
the organisation ...............................................................................................................................3
Slide 7- Identify and discuss the stakeholders group's needs ........................................................3
Slide 8- Evaluate how the needs of the stakeholder group was met...............................................3
Slide 9- CONCLUSION................................................................................................................3
SLIDE 10- REFERENCES:............................................................................................................4
Books and Journals.................................................................................................................4

Slide 2-INTRODUCTION
In recent time, there is huge competition in market as well as dynamic business environment
which creates difficulties for businesses to survive and meet their goals effectively. Business
environment includes two factors such as internal and external which has great impact on the
productivity and profitability of company (Akcam, 2020). These factors includes various
stakeholder such as suppliers, customers, employees, management, government and many more
who are connected with the business operations. McDonald's company are taken to be considered
to better understand the concept managing within competitive environment. It is most popular
fast food company which was established by Richard and Maurice in 1940 at California in US.
This project covers the analysis of an organisation's competitive , external environments
as well as critically evaluate the decision making methodologies. Further, it covers the evaluation
of the value of published financial information to stakeholders addition to nature of specific
initiative. At last it covers the needs of stakeholder groups and evaluation how the needs of
stakeholder group was met.
Slide 3- Background information on McDonald's and Key stakeholders
McDonald's is the multinational fast food company which operates in many country
across the world. It was founded in 1940 by Richard and Maurice at California in US. The
product and services of McDonald's are Cheeseburgers, coffee, soft drink, hamburgers and apple
pie which attract large number of people in whole world (Allen and Carlson, 2018). The mission
of the company is generate maximum profit by fixing the price of products affordable and
reasonable. The vision of the company is to provide delicious food at convenient locations, time
and reasonable price to the customers to they feel great about eating and enjoying their meal. It is
world largest chain of restaurant as they offer more than half of the population daily in more than
100 nations across 37,500 stores worldwide.

Stakeholder refers to the people and group of people with in a claim or stake which has interest
in the activity and decision of a company (Ashenfelter and Jurajda, 2022). It is classified into two
types such as internal and external stakeholder. Internal stakeholders are employees,
management, executives, workers, staff , directors and many other who give their efforts for the
growth of company. External stakeholder are customers, suppliers, government, general public,
sponsors, investors, competitors and many other. The customers are the main stakeholders of
company which increases the brand value, profitability and future growth of company. In
context of the relationship of MacDonald's ans stakeholders, it regards itself as the leader of
consumer but their potential buyers have less loyalty.
Slide 4- McDonald's Loyalty Programmes
Loyalty programmes refers to the schemes which formulated to make new customers as well as
retain the current customer base for the long term in order to gain competitive advantages over
competitors. In this many business offer discounts, rewards, offers, gifts, vouchers and other
invectives to attract large number of customers and retain them (Dekkers, 2020). It is designed to
motivate organisation and customers a reward for brand loyalty. Early they started McDonald's
mobile rewards program in which customers earned rewards punches on French fries and hot
McCafe' Drink.
Now McDonald's use point loyalty programme in which customers earn points after buying
products on McDonald's mobile app which they can use and redeem to buy free products such as
Mc nuggets and Big macs. They launch this programme to drive the attention of public so they
get benefits to increase their experience of having quality food at free of cost. The get food and
deals loyalty program of My McDonald's which provide points to the online buyers on their
spending so further, they use it to buy free products (Introducing My McDonald’s Rewards!,
2022).
My McDonald's rewards is the most famous loyalty programs in less time which increase the
brand image and customer base of company. It also increase the sales and revenue of company
by 15% which helps them to become leading company in restaurant industry. By this they
increased the experience and satisfaction among online clients as compare to physical store or
offline customers (McDonald, 2018). By this they get opportunities to understand more about the
technologies, market and customers trends as well as they also interact better with them in order
to meet the organisation goals. Further, they use the behaviour of customers to make another

effective strategies to increase their experience in future also. It helps the company to gain
competitive advantage and increase their market share and brand value in international market .
Slide 5-McDonald's rewards
It is the Loyalty program of McDonald's in which customers get benefits to get various
points on their spendings by which they gain extra food at less or free of cost. By opening and
login the app of McDonald's, a customer can order and get the free delivery with the point which
they can use to buy new items to get better experience (Njagi, 2019). In order to redeem the
wining points, they have to open the app of McDonald's the go to Rewards tab where they
choose a reward as well as Select use in the restaurant or Add to mobile order. To earn the
points, first they have to choose the code before placing the order in their mobile app in order to
get free delicious points as per their choices.
Slide 6- McDonald's: identify the stakeholders groups as well as explain their
relationship with the organisation
The stakeholders groups are those customers which belong to the age group of 15 to 60
which prefer better quality fast food to meet their desires. McDonald's divided its target segment
into groups according to their age, taste, area, needs, behaviour, gender, income level, degree of
loyalty, benefits, lifestyle, class, status and personality. Along with that, they divide their
segment on the basis of four categories of segmentation such as geographic, Demographic,
Behavioural and psycho graphic to increase their customer base, sales and profitability.
In geographic segment McDonald's operates in more than 100 countries as well as
mainly their stores are located in urban and semi urban area to attract the age group of 7 to 70
who eat fast foods one day in a week (Nuque-Joo, Kim and Choi, 2019). Both male and females
are the target customers of McDonald's which regular visit and travel the restaurant of
McDonald's and spend 10% of their income to meet their hunger needs.
In demographic segment, McDonald's targeted those people who regular step out from
their home for job, education, travelling, and other work generally youth, students, unmarried
people who are living out side form their home for career and job. Young married people who
have no child, teenagers, professionals, employees, learners and people who belong to lower or
middle income group are also customers of McDonald's which spend their income on the

restaurant, fast foods and beverages to increase their experience frequently. McDonald's and
these segment customers has better and loyal relationship as almost these type of customers
regularly visit the app and store and spent almost 20% of their income. Students who has less
money prefers to buy McDonald's items as it offer its food at low or affordable cost.
In behavioural segment, the target segment of McDonald's are Switchers, hard core loyal,
people who want to eat in bulk at low cost in less time (Dudovskiy, 2022). Regular fast food
eaters and who which try to new thing as well as careless people who did not give more focus on
their health and fitness are the potential customer of McDonald's (Perrault and Shaver, 2021).
With this type of customers McDonald's have strong relationship addition to most of their
revenues generated form this group.
In Psycho graphic segment, middle class, lower and working people are targeted which
has hectic lifestyle and low income to spent on luxury items. Also McDonald's targets struggler,
resigned addition to mainstreamer peoples regarding to cross culture buyers characterisation
generated by rubican and young.
Slide 7- Identify and discuss the stakeholders group's needs
This slide identify the needs of group's of customers as the main needs of customers are
the quality and healthy food with unique flavour. In recent time, the customers are now more
quality and health conscious due to increasing health issues. Enhancing health concerns by
people, increases the demand of better quality food at reasonable price. Another needs of
customers is more food at less price at one store as their needs are fast delivering of product or
easily available near their area (Liu and Atuahene-Gima, 2018). All these are the needs of
customers group. The taste and preferences of people are changing frequently as the result of this
McDonald's need to change their business policy and innovation. Customers are looking for
convenience, predictability, speed and affordability to meet their hunger requirements from fast
food restaurants.

Slide 8- Evaluate how the needs of the stakeholder group was met
In order to meet the requirements and needs of all customers group's, team of McDonald's
put more efforts and launch loyalty program to increase the experience of customers. To meet the
quality and healthy food needs of customers they add new items in their menu such as grilled
chicken salad, maple and fruit omelet, organic salad, vegan items and many more. Moreover they
also launch their mobile app in which people place offer as per their choice and get order at their
home free. As the result of this people can easily get their favourite food without going out form
their home and meet their hunger needs. Further, they start their loyalty program to attract the
people who want to buy food at low cost and free (Boyar and Davis-Friday, 2019). By this app
they give points to their customers on their order which they can use in future to get free food.
They also add more flavour in their current food and beverages items to meet the
innovative expectations of customers. Customers who belong to behavioural segment want to
new and better quality items, so McDonald's put more items which is made up form finest and
organic ingredients which helps the company to met the needs of customers. They also conduct
safety program to ensure that they offer quality food which are free from chemicals, harmful
bacteria, viruses which are the reason of consumer sickness.
Slide 9- CONCLUSION
As per the above presented information, it has been concluded that business environment
is dynamic as well as customer needs are also changing time to time. In order to survive and
maintain the customer base company have to modified their policy, items, product and services
to meet their desired goals. Various companies also launch many loyalty and rewards program
by providing points, starts, coins and other benefits on their app to attract large number of
targeted customers. In order to meet customers needs the company also make various efforts to

increase quality of their products and sell it at low cost to gain competitive advantages over
competitors.

SLIDE 10- REFERENCES:
Books and Journals
Akcam, B.K., 2020. Improving order processes with information technology: McDonald’s
case. Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases. 10(2). pp.102-107.
Allen, N. and Carlson, M.J., 2018. Focus: Why McDonald's Tax Practices Matter to the Global
Labour Movement. International Union Rights. 25(1). pp.8-28.
Ashenfelter, O. and Jurajda, Š., 2022. Minimum Wages, Wages, and Price Pass-Through: The
Case of McDonald’s Restaurants. Journal of Labor Economics. 40(S1). pp.S179-S201.
Boyar, L.B. and Davis-Friday, P., 2019. Assessing a golden opportunity: CEO performance at
McDonald’s. The CASE Journal.
Dekkers, J., 2020. From servant to driving force: Transforming the role of the supply chain in
McDonald’s The Netherlands. Journal of Supply Chain Management, Logistics and
Procurement. 3(1). pp.6-17.
Liu, W. and Atuahene-Gima, K., 2018. Enhancing product innovation performance in a
dysfunctional competitive environment: The roles of competitive strategies and market-
based assets. Industrial Marketing Management. 73. pp.7-20.
McDonald, D.M., 2018. Fixing blame in n-person attributions: A social identity model for
attributional processes in newly formed cross-functional groups. In Attribution
Theory (pp. 273-288). Routledge.
Njagi, A.G., 2019. Managing strategic change. International Journal of Advanced Research in
Management and Social Sciences. 8(4). pp.234-240.
Nuque-Joo, A., Kim, D. and Choi, S., 2019. Mcdonald's in Germany: Germans, still
lovin'it?. Academy of Strategic Management Journal. 18(2). pp.1-20.
Perrault, E. and Shaver, K., 2021. A stakeholders' attributions approach to integrating normative,
descriptive, and instrumental corporate social responsibility. Business and Society
Review. 126(3). pp.239-261.
Online
Introducing MyMcDonald’s Rewards!, 2022. [online]. Available through:
<https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/good-to-know/in-our-restaurants/my-mcdonalds-
app/rewards.html>
Dudovskiy. J., 2022. McDonald’s Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. [online]. Available
through: <https://research-methodology.net/mcdonalds-segmentation-targeting-positioning/>