Consumer Behavior Analysis: McDonald's Marketing Strategies and CRM

This report analyzes McDonald's marketing strategies, focusing on consumer behavior and customer relationship management (CRM) within the context of the fast-food industry in Malaysia. It examines a specific marketing wrongdoing involving an advertisement and analyzes the resulting consumer complaints. The report then provides recommendations for changing McDonald's corporate culture to improve marketing techniques, emphasizing the importance of understanding the target market's culture and empowering change from the bottom up. Furthermore, it explores how Information Communication Technology (ICT) can support and advance the CRM process, including investing in CRM tools and developing an effective mobile application. Finally, the report suggests a corporate volunteerism program to enhance customer relationship management. The report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of McDonald's marketing challenges and potential solutions to improve customer engagement and address marketing issues.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Obtain, report and analyse written complaint or wrongdoings report which involved key
issues of marketing of McDonald's.............................................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
Recommendations for changing corporate culture for improving key issues of marketing
techniques....................................................................................................................................3
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
Justified ways how ICT can support and advance the Customer Relationship Management
process.........................................................................................................................................5
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................6
Justified corporate volunteerism programme for McDonald's to improved Customer
Relationship Management...........................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Consumer Behaviour can be defined as the behaviour which customers display while
selecting, purchasing and consuming of products and services and ideas which they expect will
lead to satisfy their wants and needs (Almerich and et.al., 2016). Business organisation aims at
effectively understanding the consumers and their behaviour as well. In order to conduct the
present report McDonald's is being chosen and it is based on McDonald's Malaysia. The report
will explain and analyse about the wrongdoings or written complaint involving key issues of
marketing of McDonald's. The report further makes justified recommendations which relates to
the changing corporate culture for McDonald's. Two justified ways are also suggested about how
ICT can support and advance customer relationship management process. Further the report will
propose corporate volunteerism programme for McDonald's for improving the customer
relationship management.
MAIN BODY
TASK 1
Obtain, report and analyse written complaint or wrongdoings report which involved key issues of
marketing of McDonald's
Every business organisation aims at understanding the consumer behaviour so that it can
focus on effectively promoting and marketing its products and services. The marketing is
considered as the most important element for businesses to attract the target customers.
McDonald's operates its business in fast food industry and offers wide range of food products
and beverages to its customers (Silverstone, ed., 2017). It includes hamburgers, pizza, French-
fries, nuggets, iced coffee, sausage, milkshake, etc. The promotional strategy within marketing
mix of McDonald's Malaysia is focused on culture, beliefs, attitudes, religion, moral and
behaviour of customers. So that it can effectively attract its target customers and satisfy them.
McDonald's focuses on brand globally and advertise locally. The company's Billboards
uses food products for highlighting about what every Malaysian State is famous or popular for.
This campaign is the part of McDonald's promotional effort for localising the brands. The new
Mcdonald's billboards were being the turning heads due to its ingenuity for recreating the iconic
locations of Malaysia with its food products (McD's Billboards Use Food To Highlight What
Each Malaysian State Is Popular For, 2019). This is the part of promotional + marketing +
advertisement efforts of the company for localising the brand in Malaysia. This helped the
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organisation to gain effective results and outcomes as it led to make the customers satisfy by
being relevant to locally.
Through many years, this fast food chain restaurant business, i.e. McDonald's makes use
of various techniques and tactics for promoting and selling its food products and beverages. It
included luring kinds having Happy Meals toys and also enlisted the assistance of celebrities like
Michael Jordan and many more. But, it is also being involved in various legal cases and lawsuits
because of its advertisement contents ( Ryu and Lee, 2017). The international fast food chain
business tried another tactic and approach for promoting the products. But, it led to cause
wrongdoings report and complaint against McDonald's marketing. The wrongdoings report states
that the advertisement telecast by McDonald's was very upsetting. McDonald's debuted a
advertisement commercial in which it featured a boy who is asking his mother for sharing the
stories related to his deceased father.
The advertisement and marketing campaigns may bring negative impacts on the society
and thus it gets various written complaints and wrongdoings report. This McDonald's
advertisement backfired and also got promoting accusations from the people (Nyadzayo and
Khajehzadeh, 2016). The wrongdoings report stated that McDonald's was making use of
childhood grief for selling its fast food products. According to the advert, it shown a child asking
his mother about his deceased father. The mother tells him about what his father was like and it
seems in the advert that boy was sad as they were not having much things in common. After
arriving in the McDonald's outlet, while eating Filet-O-Fish, the mother says that this dish was
your father's favourite and the boy's face lights up. The advertisement of McDonald's
manipulated the emotional sentiments of customers. Many complaints were put on social media
websites of McDonald's regarding this advertisement and people called it exploitative. .
The company was forced for saying sorry or apologising and pulling the campaign back.
McDonald's then pulled out its advertisement from TV screens, various social media websites
and from everywhere it aired (McDonald's pulls ad that 'exploited child bereavement', 2017).
One of the representative of McDonald's said that it was not the intention of the company to
make anyone upset. This advertisement campaign led to bring many difficulties and issues for
the McDonald's Malaysia as well.
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TASK 2
Recommendations for changing corporate culture for improving key issues of marketing
techniques
The organisational culture are generally blaimed for the failed initiatives of the
advertisement and marketing campaigns. Thus, business organisations aims at adapting and
implementing the content marketing mindset which requires some extent of cultural shift within
the company. The corporate culture can be improved by the searching and looking for gaining a
better understanding regarding the advertisement as a communication model. Business
organisation focusing on to gain better understanding for the marketing and advertisement will
led to bring out some interesting and effective research results (Mandel and et.al., 2017). The
cultural shift task is considered as the daunting task for the McDonald's Malaysia as it have
thousands of employees. McDonald's aims at creating a content marketing friendly culture within
the business organisation so that it can improve the key marketing issues in promoting efforts at
combating organisation's wrongdoings.
Understand the current culture of target market and respect it:
McDonald's should acts a better change agents as organisational culture shift happens or
starts with the strong and compelling organisational vision and efforts of effective leaders. The
effective leaders of the company have the charisma for effectively setting the tone of the
company (3 Strategies for Changing Your Company Culture To Support Content Marketing,
2010). They tend to tap into various levels of the organisation for creating an open
communication within the organisation. In such kind of business environment, employees feel
motivated as they have chance for offering their views and ideas to be heard. Open
communication and views being heard leads to create sense of cultural ownership among the
various levels of organisation. Every employee of the organisation share their views and ideas
related to advertisement content, marketing and advertisement campaigns and the content which
can be approved and recognised by the target markets. These factors lead to bring improvements
in the organisational culture that supports and can further help in improving the marketing issues
in promotional efforts.
Empowering change and cultural shift from the bottom up level:
McDonald's focusing on to bring changes in its corporate culture so that it can improve
the key marketing issues in promotional efforts. Creating a organisational culture which supports
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and provides assistance to marketing is critical. As online conversation, communication and
content creation is considered as the core competency of marketing of business (Hyun and
Perdue, 2017). McDonald's should focus on implementing bottom up change management
process in its corporate culture by focusing on the following factors:
 Marketing supervisors may focus on giving certain list of desired results for each of their
reports that needs to be meet or completed within a particular time-frame.
 Then every report needs to be empowered for spending time in order to develop their
unique process or plan which can allow them for achieving those desired results.
 Every plan is needed to include a list of resources and supports which marketing
supervisor will provide so that reports can effectively meet the desired objectives within
specified time-frame (Godey and et.al., 2016).
 Each party of the organisation can be held accountable for delivering on the
commitments. They can also meet on regular intervals so that they can have productive
conversation regarding the key issues of marketing. It will lead to keep momentum
shifting or moving in the direction of success and also the desired outcomes can be
delivered.
Compelling content needs to be focus of marketing efforts:
There are abundance of ads all over the place, thus, business organisation should focus on
standing out of the competition. The corporate culture needs to be built in a way that it
effectively identifies and understand about what can stimulate content or message can effectively
stimulate customers. Earlier, the business organisations and marketers needs to focus on
effectively identifying the needs, wants and preferences of its target customers so that it can meet
their demands and satisfy them. But, this is not enough, in order to have effective and successful
marketing campaigns organisation also needs to focus on identifying the religion, culture and
trends of target markets and compelling content for the target customers. Marketers may face
challenges in crafting right content and transforming this into something which can look and
sound new (De Mooij, 2019). This is very important because now-a-days customers look around
in the competitive markets, research and then rationalize before purchasing anything. Thus,
creating right and ideal content having sincerity and detailed solutions can effectively meet and
answer the target customer's demand and wants.
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TASK 3
Justified ways how ICT can support and advance the Customer Relationship Management
process
Technological factors plays important role in each business aspects. With the recent
evolution within the technology and information techniques has led to bring influences on how
business operates and even on the relationship management process. This also leads to bring
influences on the marketing role specially with regards to the customer relationship management.
Through the integration of technology, communication with customer becomes faster, easier and
convenient and thus, company can bring improvements in the customer relationship management
process (Badwan and et.al., 2017). Communication is massive part of customer relationship
management as due to availability of ease in communication, customer's needs and wants can be
catered effectively.
Most essential things to be considered by McDonald's is convenience and attention while
planning about improving the customer relationship management. Following are provided some
justified ways through which McDonald's Malaysia can effectively make use of the Information
Communication technology to support the Customer Relationship Management.
Investing in the effective CRM Tools:
Trainings on customer relationship management can assists the employees of McDonald's
to gain massive boost in regards to communicate effectively with potential target customers.
McDonald's needs to focus on implementing various new technologies and CRM tools so that it
can effectively manage the relationship with customers (Andrade and Doolin, 2016). Company
also needs to provide training to its employees for the CRM System so that they have tools
needed for gathering relevant information regarding customers and their customer journey. Such
information can be also used for effectively resolving the key issues relating to the wrongdoings
that can relate with the McDonald's on daily basis. Investing in the CRM Tools will help the
McDonald's to better understand and analyse about habits and behaviour of customers, and thus
through this, business can bring improvements in the customer relationship management process.
Developing an effective application:
It makes sense for the business organisation to make effective utilisation of the new and
advanced technology for gaining effective advantages and benefits. Since everyone ion the
today's modern world makes use of the smartphones, business should aim at taking advantage of
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the advanced technology available on these smartphone and mobile devices. McDonald's can
have the chance for improving the customer relationship management by being present on
mobile phones as the smartphones are always present with people (How To Use Technology To
Improve Customer Relationships, 2016). The mobile application can also help in resolving the
key marketing and advertisement issues in effectively way. The individuals who intent for report
on the wrongdoings which is related with McDonald's daily basis activities can make use of
mobile phone application and it can be quickly solved by the support mechanism and teams.
TASK 4
Justified corporate volunteerism programme for McDonald's to improved Customer Relationship
Management
Corporate volunteerism programme can be defined as the scenario in which employees
take parts in various social activities on the voluntary basis. Business organisation should focus
on implementing various corporate volunteerism programmes alongside of their corporate social
responsibilities. These volunteering programmes leads to bring great benefits and positive
influences on the brand image of the business organisation (How Community Outreach Can
Boost Customer Acquisition & Retention, 2019).
McDonald's should frame its strategies that can help in building, sustaining and
improving the customer relationship management process and also focus on outreaching to
community through corporate volunteerism programmes. Following are proposed some
corporate volunteerism programmes for the McDonald's through which it can effectively bring
improvements in the customer relationship management process and on individuals as well who
intend for reporting on the wrongdoings on McDonald's branches.
McDonald's can focus on giving employees the choice or option for taking off any one
afternoon from a month and do volunteering at the local mentoring programs. It may be focused
on the underprivileged children (Zhang and Benyoucef, 2016). These volunteering programs
helps in improving the brand reputation and corporate image. As businesses which are able for
visibly demonstrating about their morals and ethical practices and also shows commitment to
society are more likely to attract large number of customers and have stronger reputation.
Through such volunteerism programmes, company can effectively improve the customer
relationship management process. McDonald's should also provide guidelines to all employees
who are participating in the volunteering programs that they had to check in and check out of the
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programs. There should not be the way for avoiding the community service or volunteering
program.
McDonald's can also focus on involving with food rescue operations. This volunteering
program helps in cutting the food waste and also helps needy people at the same time.
McDonald's can link with some volunteering group who pickup the food products that is going to
waste and they deliver the same to needy peoples. McDonald's donating the food products
wherever possible can help it to improve the brand image and reputation. These volunteering
programmes also helps in enriching the experiences of customers, in terms of the boosting the
customer's retention. McDonald's should focus on tailoring the community campaign and
volunteering efforts in a way that it helps in enriching the customer experiences. Business can
also focus on listening to feedback of customers and also analysing the data (Vaishnavi and
Kuechler, 2015). These will lead to identification of the relevant causes an opportunities for
enriching customer's experience and also to bring improvements in the customer relationship
management.
CONCLUSION
Every business organisation focuses on gaining information about the needs, wants and
preferences of customers so that it can meet them effectively. The report is based on the key
marketing issues or wrongdoings of Malaysia McDonald's. The news report or written complaint
about wrongdoings which is related to the marketing issues of McDonald's is obtained and
analysed in the report. Further some recommendations are provided for improving the corporate
culture so that it can help in improving the marketing techniques and promoting the efforts. The
report also includes brief information about how Information communication technology
supports in maintaining customer relationship management. Some volunteerism programmes are
also suggested for the improved Customer Relationship Management process.
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Vaishnavi, V. K. and Kuechler, W., 2015. Design science research methods and patterns:
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Zhang, K. Z. and Benyoucef, M., 2016. Consumer behavior in social commerce: A literature
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Online
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