Marketing Comparative Analysis: McDonald's and Burger King Brands

This report offers a comparative marketing analysis of McDonald's and Burger King, two prominent fast-food chains. It begins by examining their respective value propositions, highlighting how McDonald's emphasizes convenience and a clean environment, while Burger King focuses on affordability and customization. The report then delves into their online customer engagement strategies, discussing McDonald's use of Spotify and Instagram, and Burger King's social media campaigns, evaluating the success of each brand's digital marketing efforts. Furthermore, the analysis explores the impact of the macro-environment, including political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors, on both companies. It also identifies opportunities and threats related to economic growth, technological advancements, and competition. The report analyzes print advertisements from both brands, relating them to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, specifically focusing on truthfulness and a case study of the Maggi noodles crisis, evaluating the companies' adherence to ethical standards.

Marketing
Comparative analysis of McDonald's and Burger King
Student Details
5/22/2019

MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Overview
This project is going to analyze various marketing elements of two famous fast food
companies named McDonald's and Burger King. The detailed analyses of the marketing
activities of these companies are as follows in the form of question and answer.
Answer 1
The value proposition of McDonald's
It means the main product or service of the company that makes it attractive for its
customers. The value proposition of the company is to bring friendliness, consistency,
convenience, and cleanliness in its atmosphere. In its value proposition, speed and convenience
are also included.
The value proposition of Burger King
Burger King as the name suggests is also a fast food company that deals in delicious
burgers all over the world. The value proposition of Burger King is to provide pocket-friendly
burgers to its customers. It also focuses on modifying burgers at low prices according to the
respective country’s need.
Comparison of McDonald and Burger King Value prepositions
McDonald’s is always considered to be more profitable and large industry then burger
king, however, burger kings always give McDonald’s competitive edge. It also talked about
speed, however, the value proposition of burger king is mostly based on charging a low cost for
their diversified burgers.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
The value proposition of both companies focuses on different perspectives of their
customers. McDonald's tends to give its customer a neat and clean environment to provide them
with their delicious burgers. However, the burger king wants to save the pockets of its customers
by charging low prices as compared to McDonald's (Yuksel, 2012).
Answer 2
McDonald’s Method of Engaging Customer Online
McDonald is attracting many customers, still, in order to gain a competitive advantage
over others especially Burger King, the company is from a few time focusing on attracting
customers online sources also. In its strategy of digital marketing, McDonald has included two
strategies that are its Spotify channel and Instagram (McDonald's, 2019).
Burger King’s Method of Engaging Customer Online
Burger King is also not behind in attracting its customers worldwide. Same as McDonald
the Burger King company also using digital marketing to attract more people. The company has
started a Chicken Redemption Campaign on social media with hashtags (Wymer, 2010). It
requires a good amount of marketing efforts to involve as many persons as the company can.
Analysis of Success of Both Brands in Online Customer Engagement
This gave them to increase in sales as this attracted many mothers, in order to provide
nutritious food to their kids, even to youngsters also. Due to this, the company is able to maintain
its pace of success and attaining growth rapidly.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Unlike McDonald’s, the website of burger king places all corporate-related information at
corners, which makes it less attractive, even it doesn’t effectively disclose the nutritious contents
of the food. Due to this, the company is able to engage the customer in a large amount however
still serving fewer customers then McDonald’s (Yang, 2012).
Answer 3
Impact of Macro Environment on products of McDonald's and Burger King
The impact of factors on the products of McDonald’s and Burger King are discussed below:
 Political: The government gives its supports to these fast food burger companies in
expanding their business globally. It also provides them political backgrounds in major
markets. It gives them support for various e-commerce services and marketing.
 Economical: It helps them in getting the agreement in expanding their business
internationally. It also helps them revising their prices at the time of prevailing inflation
and deflation in the domestic as well as international markets.
 Social: Both the fast food burger companies have established their name in the market
and among the societies in a very effective manner. A society with their disparities, make
the companies understood about their importance and sustainability.
 Technological: This factor helps both the companies in marketing through various
channels (Ardito & Messeni, 2019). It also helps them in manufacturing their products
according to changing trends.
 Environmental: This factor lays impact of environment-based elements on the functions
of both fast food burger companies. Various environmental elements revolve around the
protection of the environment still earning profits.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
 Legal: This factor enforces various laws, act, emplacement codes, industry codes on both
the selected organization in domestic as well as international markets.
Environmental Developments leads to Opportunities and threats for Companies
This section is going to look into various environmental developments all over the world,
which can give big opportunities as well as intense threats to these fast food burger companies in
future.
 Economic Growth: The global economic growth is expected to remain at 3 % for the
year 2019 and 2020. This, in turn, affects the market demand of the products, which
ultimately may lead to the economic instability of both the companies in their respective
markets (UN, 2019).
 Increase in Artificial Intelligence: The invention of robots, AI facilitative machines, etc
gives rise in the advancement of present technologies of both companies that are
McDonald’s and Burger King.
 Increase in modern marketing tools: A gradual increase in the use of modern
marketing tools instead of various traditional tools, both the considered companies can
get a big opportunity in future to opt for the modern means and market its products well
(Bigliardi, 2013). For this purpose, they can go for digital marketing.
 Commitment to Fast Food Industry: the commitment of customers as well as
companies to fast food industry leads to the entry of many fast foods serving companies
in the market that can in future provide competitive threats to McDonald’s and Burger
King.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Dealing with identified opportunities and threats
From the above section, some threats and opportunities that McDonald's and Burger King
can face in the future are identified, these are described in the following lines:
 The threat of Economic instability: The inflation or deflation caused by respective
markets, in which McDonald’s or Burger King serves, act as agents of increase or
decrease in the product prices of the company. The opportunity of technology
advancement: Increase in use of artificial intelligence leads to the advancement of
technologies of McDonald’s and Burger King.
 The opportunity of Digital marketing: With the help of modern means of marketing,
McDonald’s and Burger King have perfect tools for marketing their products through
digital media (Chong, Bian, & Zhang, 2016).
 The threat of Competition: In this, companies need to make their products more
demanding and delicious, in order to get a competitive advantage over other fast food
serving companies.
Answer 4
In this section, one print advertisement of each of the brand is going to analyze in order to
identify the types of customer needs these advertisements to tend to trigger, with the help of
Maslow’s need hierarchy theory of motivation.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
McDonald’s Advertisement
Source: Advertisement of Burger King Products (CRUZ, 2015)
With this print advertisement of McDonald’s, the company specifies combination of
different products it offers in one meal, this is known as “The Big Meal”. Due to this in combo
meals the individual prices of the products get reduced and in combination big meal costa less
then the expected rates of those products separetly. With this advertisement, the company is
trying to trigger the psychological need of the individuals. As this needs triggers the mind of the
individual for the craving of food. On the other hand, it also triggers the security need of the
individual, as the big meal is securing their excess money (Ghobadian & Regan, 2014).
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Burger King’s Advertisement
Source: Advertisement of Burger King Products (King, 2019)
This advertisement of burger king tells about the best option of fast food through its
advertisement. It also specifies the seven-inch long burger and a meal of $6.25. With this
advertisement, the company tends to trigger the psychological need. It is so because the
company is trying to trigger the taste of the consumers as well as the desire for big size burgers.
It also triggers the need for security, as the $6.25 meal is a launch to give more products in a
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
low amount. This helps the consumers in saving their spending, which in turn helps them to feel
secure from unnecessary spending (King, 2019).
Answer 5
According to the CMA code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, equality among all
business professionals should be maintained. It helps in reducing the accuracy of representation,
threat, truthfulness, harassments, campaign limitations and other types of discriminations from
the organizations (Chonko & Hunt, 2018). The analysis of the extent of truthfulness adopted by
the companies is going to be done by taking a case study of banning of Nestle India Maggi.
Maggi is one of the best selling products of Nestle. In 2014 and 2015, Maggie was
banned in India, as a laboratory of its states claimed that the product contains lead and
monosodium glutamate that is MSG beyond its permissible limits. Due to this, Nestlé’s noodles
share in India dropped to very lower limits. The company made some changes and re-launched
Maggi in India by claiming that they have removed the deadly substances from Maggi, however
again studies showed that the product still contains some harmful substances (Mishra, 2017).
In this way, the company for their personal interest ignored the health of millions of
people. They are violating the ethical code of truthfulness. This can hamper their image in the
long run. The company may lose its market share in other countries also. Its profit margins can
also be reduced extremely. It is the responsibility of the company to look into this case and take
corrective actions as soon as possible.
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Bibliography
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CRUZ, L. (2015, June 7). ‘Dinnertimin’ and ‘No Tipping’: How Advertisers Targeted Black
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MARKETING: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
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https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html
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