Service Concept in McDonald’s

This report analyzes the service concept of McDonald’s and assesses its approach in identifying customer needs and designing services for better customer experience. It also provides recommendations for improving service quality.

Running Head: Service Concept in McDonald’s
Service Concept in McDonald’s
Report
System04104
9/5/2019

Service Concept in McDonald’s
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Introduction
McDonald’s is one of the leading fast food giants in the world. McDonald’s is known
for its quality services and food items, especially its chicken and beef burger products. This
report analyses the services concept of McDonald’s and assess the approach of McDonald’s
that how it identify the needs of its customers and designs its service to provide better
experience to its customers. This report also suggest some recommendations after assess the
implementation of service concept of McDonald’s.
Company Profile
McDonald’s is a popular retail food chain of the world that is known for its fast food
items like Burgers and beverage products. The company was founded in 1940 in California
(USA) and it deals in various fast food products like hamburgers, milkshakes, salads,
Chicken, French Fries, coffee and desserts etc. The company provides its services more than
130 countries. The company operates its business with large number of independent
suppliers. The company operates its business through various franchises and it has more than
37500 restaurants all over the world. The company has more than 210,000 employees. The
annual net profit of the company is US$5.924 billion while the revenue of the company is
US$21.025 billion. McDonald’s believes in providing best customer services to its customers
with quality business operation and its service concept is more popular than any other
restaurant business. The report discusses that how McDonald’s has conveyed its service
concept to its customers.
Literature Review on Service Concept of McDonald’s
What is service and Service Concept?
There are various scholars defined the term ‘service’ in different ways. However,
some of the popular definitions of service and service concept are as follow:
Foxall (2013) defined in their article that “a service is generally defined by an act that
is offered by one party to another party, which may tie with physical product or may not.”
“A service is an economic activity that creates value and provides benefits for
customers at specific time and place by bringing about the desired change in or on behalf of
the recipient of the service” (Aburoub, Hersh & Aladwan, 2011).

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Ghobadian and O’Regan (2014) defined in their article that service is intangible in
nature and is generally associated with the product or performance. The service concept is
associated with the innovative change in the service design and quality that satisfy the needs
of the customer and give value for their money. The new service development, service
design, and innovation in the service are some of the key aspects of service designs. In other
words, service design is the way in which every organisation like to have its services
perceived by its customers, shareholders, lenders, or stakeholders (Ghobadian & O’Regan,
2014).
Service concept of McDonald’s
The increasing demand of services sector organisations and booming in the service
economy force the service industry to develop service concept to provide better service
experience to the customers. Introducing service concept has been considered as one of the
crucial step for a company to create a comprehensive service model. Many researchers found
that comparing the quality of intangible services in food sectors is directly related with the
customer’s satisfaction, trust, and loyalty in fast food industry. McDonald’s is one of the
successful business organisations that use the service concept to design its service quality as
per the need of the customers and it enables it as one of the high brand equity in the fast food
sector. Dörner, Gassmann, and Gebauer (2011) stated in their article that the high brand
equity of McDonald has helped the company to gain crucial competitive advantages over the
competitors and service the customers in specific and responsible manner. It is the
requirement to provide better services to the customers that organisation understands the
importance of continuous service improvement to provide better services to the customers.
One of the great examples of McDonald’s is when they improved their hamburger production
method to provide better product and services to the customers. The change in hamburger
production process helps the organisation to cut the cost of the products, reduced the time
consuming for preparing the product for customers that further speed up the services and
bring better value for customers (Grönroos, 2011). The continuous improvement in the
services concept is the one of the crucial aspects that encourages the employees to
continuously identify the needs and requirement of customers and design the services
according to their needs.
According to Raju, Singh & Tariyal (2015), the first and fundamental need of
designing services for the customers is identifying the people that matters for the business.

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Then the next step is to match the investment in the products and design the product or
services that fulfil the needs and requirements of the customers. New service design or new
product development is the primary and fundamental need of service concept that helps the
organisation to design the services that enhance the customer experience and their loyalty
towards the organisation (Koh, Teh, Wong, Lim, & Migin, 2014). The continuous rethinking
about the definition of services will be the next step in designing the services for the
customers. It is crucial to consider that no customer wants to wait for a burger for long-time.
The people even do not want to sit for 5 minutes in a dirty restaurant. It means an
organisation that provides services to its customers or sells products, it is necessary to first
care about the better services design for customers. Cleanliness, reducing the waiting time,
speed of service, and comforts during consuming the meal should be some great examples of
best services design. McDonald’s cares for all these aspects of services and also continuously
focuses on that how they can improve the services, so they can provide better customer
experience to their customers (Johns & Van Doren, 2010).
The services concept is very much embedded with the organisational culture.
McDonald’s spends a huge amount on the organisational culture to provide better facilities
and services to its customers. It can be said that customer service is another product of
McDonald’s that attracts and retain customer while they consuming the products in the
McDonald’s restaurant. It is essential for every organisation to know that people are the key
of success of any organisation and it is necessary for the organisation to care about the needs
and requirements of customer while serving them (Luca, Hibbert & McDonald, 2016).
Marketing Mix and Service Concept of McDonald’s
The quality of service depends on several factors such as speed of providing services,
transparency with customers, availability, and accessibility to reach the customers,
cleanliness, simplicity, accuracy, and friendliness etc. McDonald cares for all these aspects of
services and provides customer centric services to its people (Huotari & Hamari, 2012).
McDonald’s understand the needs of customers, so every outlet of the company ensures that
company will provide better customer services to its customers that satisfy the needs of
customers. McDonald’s burger customisation for young generation people is a great example
that how well it cares the need of customers (Bitner & Wang, 2014). Apart from this, the
McDonalds also minimise the time for waiting the products in the restaurant as it provide
burgers within a very short period of time. Even the infrastructure of every restaurant has

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been designed in such a way that it gives better comfort to its customers during the service.
However, the customisation in the Burger is replicated by the other competitors in the market
but the success of McDonald’s has not being copied by any other companies. The dining
experience of McDonald’s makes it different from its competitors and also helps in its
services. The interior of McDonald’s shows the image of the company and attract the
customers along with its tasty food items. It is just like the new product of the company
ticked all the new boxes related to service quality and design (Heinonen, Strandvik,
Mickelsson, Edvardsson, Sundström, & Andersson, 2010).
The approach of McDonald’s to process the food also influences its pricing strategy
and helps to review their pricing strategy. It also helps to charge reasonable prices from the
customers for the product. However, the service is totally related with the product delivered
to the customers and the quality of service is crucial when delivering the product to the
customers (Gummesson, 2014).
Backend and Frontend Services and Optimisation of Process
One of the most important things about the McDonalds is that it focuses on both
backhand and frontend services. The front hand operation of the company is related with
serving customers and cares all the factors, which is essential to provide better service to the
customers in the restaurant (Rust & Huang, 2014). While, the back hand operations of the
company is dealing with those internal factors, which are responsible for designing services
for the people. These factors are employees, stakeholders, and people, who are associated
with the organisation to serve customer with great quality. To provide best customer
experience McDonald always focuses on optimising the service processes and ensure that
customer will get best experience in the McDonald. It is really beneficial for McDonald to
care about the quality of services and design the services in such a way that fulfil the needs of
customer and give them best experience during their consumption of McDonald’s products in
the restaurants of McDonald’s (Grönroos & Ravald, 2011).
Service Encounters
One of the crucial things that are more significant in providing better services to the
customers is service encounters. The involvement of internal personnel of McDonald and
customers in creating high quality of services is an important aspect of service concept.
Huotari and Hamari (2012) included in their work that the interaction between personnel and
customers aims to create a high quality service encounter in the organisation. Service

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encounter play a significant role in providing best services to the customers. The overall
service encounters could be improved when the service encounter is effective. Although to
improve the service encounters which is a crucial aspect of service concept, McDonalds can
use a standardisation approach that help the organisation to provide a better service quality to
the customers and it also helps to identify the needs of customers that what they expect from
the organisation. Service encounters generally ignore by many hospitality and service sector
organisation that plays an important role in designing the services in the organisation
(Grönroos & Ravald, 2011). However, it is really important that people who are involve in
serving people in the organisation understand the role of service encounters and know how
they can meet the standard approach of the organisation. The role of staffs and managers is
crucial as they can help each other to understand meaning of standardisation in the services
and know about the advantages of service encounter in the McDonald’s restaurants. The
service encounter not only helpful in designing the services according to the need of
customers rather it also helps to understand the pain point of consumers and then approach
those things which is crucial for providing standardised services to the customers (Huotari &
Hamari, 2012). The feedback of customers during the service encounter is always helpful in
designing the services as per the needs of customers and it also helpful in improving the
service encounter practices.
To measure the quality of services it is required for an organisation to review their
service policies. The services concept focuses on those key performance indicators that
defines the organisation to assess whether the organisation is able to meet the goals or not.
McDonalds always consider the service concept during the services provided to its customers
(Grönroos & Ravald, 2011). It is also crucial that McDonald’s review the services through
various surveys and feedbacks of the customers and ask them to provide their suggestions to
improve the quality of services, changes in product quality, and adding new features in their
services. Implement the new feedbacks and introducing new services in the restaurant is the
fundamental practices of services designs and it shows how effectively organisation considers
the service concept and its importance in the organisation (Kushwaha & Agrawal, 2015). The
continuous interaction with the customers and considering their feedbacks helps the
McDonald has to design new services in the organisation to provide better customer
experience in the restaurants of McDonald’s.

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Recommendation
McDonald’s is known for its service concept and approach to provide best service quality
to its users. The innovative approach of McDonald’s in designing the services for its
customers is one of the highly appreciated parts of McDonald’s business in all over the
world. However, despite being these quality services, McDonald is lacking somewhere in
providing best service quality to its customers. To improve the service quality of McDonald’s
there are following recommendations can be given to the organisation and its management:
1. The managers of the organisation should focus on front-end and back-end operations
in the organisation, which are the crucial parts in designing the services of the
organisation. The front-end operations included the interaction of staffs or manager
with customer. This interaction can help the organisation to get feedback of customers
and design the service in such a way that provides better experience to the customers.
The front-end interaction is an important part in service concept and can be consider
as the basis of bring innovative changes in service design. Although the concept of
service encounter is really important for improving the service quality, as it can help
the organisation to detect the pain point of customers through interaction and bring
necessary changes in the service quality. However, the McDonald’s can also consider
the interaction
2. Another thing that McDonald must consider during providing services is setting a
benchmark for its service operations. The service operation must follow the set
standards that can be set by the organisation in considering the competitors service
strategy and quality. Setting benchmark in service operation can really improve the
quality of services and fulfil the demand of customers by providing them better
customer experience. Prior setting standards for service operation, it is necessary for
the organisation to identify the core customer values and their expectations from the
organisation.
3. There is always a scope for improving the services quality in an organisation and it is
the fundamental of service concept. The organisation needs to identify every
opportunity of change and should design the service in such a way that can provide
better services to the customers and provide best service experience.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, as there are huge number of customers served by McDonald every
year, service concept is really crucial thing for the organisation to consider. McDonald is
known for its innovative changes in service quality and providing better services to its
customers but to meet the changing needs and expectations of customers, the organisation
must consider the service encounter factors and setting benchmark for its service operations.
These factors will help the organisation to provide better services to its customers and fulfil
their expectation. It is really beneficial for the McDonald to consider the innovative changes
in the service operation and cares about the changing need and expectations of customer
while designing services for the customers.

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