Analysis of 'The Founder': A Case Study on Business Strategy

This case study analyzes the film 'The Founder,' focusing on the business journey of Ray Kroc and the creation of the McDonald's empire. The student reflects on the movie's portrayal of marketing, persuasion, and entrepreneurial drive, particularly how Kroc's methods, though sometimes manipulative, contributed to his success. The assignment explores the importance of effectively pitching ideas, maintaining determination, and adapting to market dynamics. The student contrasts their initial product-oriented marketing perspective with the film's emphasis on value proposition and market problem-solving, drawing parallels to Steve Jobs' approach. The case study applies expectancy theory to explain the effectiveness of Kroc's persuasive techniques, and concludes with a commitment to incorporating market research into future marketing assignments.

Running head: CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Name of the Student
Author note

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My name is ___, and I am a student pursing ___. I aspire to become a marketing and
advertising professional in the future, and this is the reason why I have been pursuing this
course and have been a part of several marketing assignments. This assignment focuses on
the movie called McDonald’s Empire- The founder. I watched this movie on the 22nd of
September, 2019. The film was directed by John Lee Handcock, and written by Robert
Siegel. It is based on a business man striving hard to sell his milkshake machines, and how a
deal with McDonald’s changed his life.
The film showed that despite the major conflicts that did exist in the life of Ray
Keaton, a salesman trying to sell his milkshake machines, his drive to succeed never faded, as
he went on to crack a deal with the owners of McDonald’s who did seem to be interested in
the idea. It is from this stage that the life of Keaton started to change. However, Keaton has
seemingly taken a highly manipulative approach for the purpose of realizing his dreams and
succeeding in his ventures, to the extent where many people have mistakenly confused him
for being the owner of McDonald’s himself (Lee Handcock 2016). The purpose of this is to
understand the fact that an idea could fail in the market, but that does not determine the true
potential of the idea. This is because of the fact that the major thing that has to be considered
is to make sure that the pitching of the idea is done properly. Creating strong value
propositions and adding value to the existing idea and selling them as solutions to existing
problems in the market is the major requisite that s required for a business idea to succeed.
My attitudes before watching this movie always revolved around the idea that for the
purpose of making a breakthrough in the market, a product has to be highly innovative, and
has to be solving market existing market problems. The reason why I watched this film was
because I needed to know the art of marketing a business idea successfully. This is of
relevance to my personal development, since it would be able to shape my abilities of
analysing a product or an idea and the benefits that each of the features of a product or idea

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could bring to the market, and how they could possibly solve market problems. I realized
after watching the film that my perception of product oriented marketing is not right, and that
marketing a product effectively with appropriate messages is the key. However, I agree with
the result, as Apple too uses this same tactic to market its products.
I learned that in order to succeed with a business idea, a businessman should be able
to have the ability to influentially pitch the idea, be determined throughout the failures, and
also be able to make sure that a persuasive approach in his or her communication processes is
maintained professionally. For example, Steve Jobs had his invention of the first Macintosh
rejected by a number of retail stores. However, his pitching and persuasion processes,
including his determination and belief to succeed made Apple what it is today.
It perfectly links to expectancy theory. The expectancy theory suggests that people
tend to make an action or purchase, as long as there is a psychological or materialistic reward
attached to a proposal (Barba-Sánchez and Atienza-Sahuquillo 2017). The persuasion
attempts by Ray Keaton exactly does that, by putting benefits and solutions attached with the
idea of the product that he was selling.
The learning was good because it helped me in understanding the importance of
pitching and designing messages in a persuasive manner, that adds value to proposed ideas.
The learning however gave way to understanding that sometimes a businessman has to be
manipulative in order to be able to make sure that his ideas succeed in the market. This could
be highly unethical as a business person. Therefore, to some extent, I disagree with the
learning outcome. However, I do tend to agree with it for most of the part. It tests me to
reconsider my ideas of product oriented marketing, rather than focusing on adding value
through persuasion and addressing loopholes.

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After this evaluation, the major thing that I could change is to think of marketing
ideas based on the features of a product, and rather concentrate on market dynamics, and find
the problems that exist in a market and how a particular product or idea addresses those. As a
result, the next time when I am asked to do an assignment based on marketing a product or an
idea, I would tend to do more research on the market than the features of the product or the
idea.
As a result, I have also ensured that when I read about new products in the market, I
tend to understand the market in which the product has been launched, rather than analysing
the features of the product. As an example, I now perfectly relate to Steve Job’s speech on the
launch of the iPod, where he addressed the lags in the market simultaneously with describing
the product. Something that did not work in putting this learning into practice is the fact that
some products in the market are purely disruptive innovations, and one cannot possibly
analyse their effectiveness based on the market in which they are launching. However, I plan
on focusing on this learning outcome in my future assignments, and my own business in the
future.

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References
Barba-Sánchez, V. and Atienza-Sahuquillo, C., 2017. Entrepreneurial motivation and self-
employment: evidence from expectancy theory. International Entrepreneurship and
Management Journal, 13(4), pp.1097-1115.
The Founder. (2016). [film] Directed by J. Lee Handcock. USA.