MBA Marketing: Market Research for McDonald's New Product Launch

This report presents a market research proposal focused on McDonald's, aiming to address declining customer interest and productivity by launching new products like Mc Tea and fresh beef burgers. The research outlines the objectives, which include identifying new product opportunities and developing a marketing plan. It details the intended outcomes of the product launch, such as increased competitiveness and customer satisfaction, and identifies target demographics for segmentation. The report also describes the data collection methods, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, to gather insights from customer feedback. Furthermore, the proposal includes the implementation of the marketing research plan, emphasizing strategies like free product trials, risk assessments, and promotional activities to ensure a successful launch. The report references academic sources and provides a comprehensive overview of the strategies McDonald's can employ to achieve its marketing goals and regain customer interest.

MBA - MARKETING FOR
MANAGERS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The market research includes about the launch of a new product by McDonald's to gain a
higher rate of productivity. Although McDonald's is one of the leading fast food chains dealing
with a variety of products in order to satisfy their customers. Although, lack of new product
range has led the clients to lose their interest in the offered services of the company that in turn
revealed a lack of productivity. Therefore, launching and implementation of new product with an
appropriate with a proper marketing plan can help McDonald's to achieve their targets by
satisfying and attracting a wide range of customers. The proposal will include the intended
outcomes along with the targeted demographics. In addition, it involves different aspects of data
collected and research methodology. A timeline and a proposed budget will also be included
within the proposal highlighting the results of research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
TASK 2: MARKET RESEARCH PROPOSAL..............................................................................1
Objective.................................................................................................................................1
PURPOSE AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM..........................................................1
MARKETING PLAN......................................................................................................................1
Existing Knowledge...............................................................................................................1
Intended outcomes..................................................................................................................2
Target demographics..............................................................................................................2
Collection of Required Data...................................................................................................3
IMPLEMENTING MARKETING RESEARCH PLAN.................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

TASK 2: MARKET RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Objective
To conduct a market research in order to identify the new product launched by
McDonald's.
PURPOSE AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM
The purpose of the study is to conduct research about new products launched by
McDonald’s. It is because the company has been dealing with an issue of decreasing customers
day by day. Therefore, to overcome this issue, McDonald's has decided to make involvement of
some new products so that they are able to regain interest and attention of customers so that it
will help them to achieve a higher rate of competitiveness in the market place again. Because of
decreased number of customers of McDonald's, there is a need for the development and
implementation of new products (Luca, Hibbert and McDonald, 2016). This can help
McDonald's to gain an appropriate rate of productivity by attracting and satisfying the customers.
It is because from a long time, the company has not bought any changes in the currently
proposed services of McDonald’s by proposing any new range of products. This has in turn
resulted in a dissatisfied set of customers who are anticipating some new launch of product by
McDonald’s. Therefore, launch of new products can actually help McDonald’s to gain the
attention of various customers, thus it will help them in achieving their targets at much faster
rate.
MARKETING PLAN
Existing Knowledge
McDonald's is one of the leading fast food chains that have attracted a huge amount of
customers through worldwide. McDonald's believes in following one of the most efficient
strategies of providing people quality products at low prices. This helped company to cover a
wide area, thus satisfying huge amount of population. However, as the company is dealing with a
limited range of products, they are affected with a decreased set of customers. The marketing
plan for McDonald's involves products that they can launch for specific customer segments.
Therefore, McDonald's have decided to launching some new range of products with ideas
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involving the launch of Mc Tea and fresh beef burgers. This idea has been developed to provide
their customers something new.
This seems to be a very attractive option and after implementation can actually help McDonald's
to achieve a higher rate of productivity. The marketing plan will cover all loop holes that are
affecting the overall rate of customers like less promotional activities etc. and thus will help
McDonald's to achieve a higher rate of competitiveness again in market place. The market
research plan for McDonald’s have together focused on the factors that may act as a barrier while
the launch of new products. This is considered as an essential step because a pre identification of
risk factors will help McDonald’s to involve such strategies and ways that can help them to cope
up with any hindering aspect (Kotler, 2015). Therefore, the market plan will involve the target
audience, issues and intended outcomes of proposal so that McDonald's can also stay clear of
their objectives and ways of achieving them.
Intended outcomes
The outcome of the research after the launch of new products is the ability to cope up
with an increasing level of competition in the market and can achieve higher productivity and
popularity. It is because the idea of launching new products can actually help in gaining the
attention of customers at a huge extent. Also, it is on considering the prevailing demands of
McDonald’s customers that in turn necessitates the company to take efficient strategies to keep
them contended. It is hereby intended to develop the market with newly launch products that
factually satisfy the consumers and their taste of food being the main product or service of
McDonald’s. This is also with a specific consideration of regaining the lost interest of certain
customers in the market.
Target demographics
The segmentation, positioning and targeting are considered as the most essential aspects
required for an appropriate marketing strategy that can help McDonald's to achieve all their
targets at much faster rate. There are four types of segment in which McDonald's can focus upon
and these involve geographic, behavioural, psycho graphic and demographic (Hair, Wolfinbarger
and Page, 2015). The geographic includes both densities, urban and rural along with the target of
age group of more than 8 years of children. The demographic segment may involve different
stages of life cycle and also covers target as students, professionals etc. for being very efficient
option that easily get attracted and act as a source of increasing the profitability. While
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considering the behavioural segment, McDonald's can analyse the status of potential fast food
eaters because on that basis they can make specific changes. For the psycho graphic
segmentation, McDonald's can analyse factors on basis of lifestyle of people and their social
class. These factors will help McDonald's in a better positioning, segmentation and targeting of
customers and this will further help in modifying the processing rate of functions and operations.
Collection of Required Data
There are two ways of gathering information that is used within research and two well-
known methods are qualitative and quantitative methods (Andrews and Shimp, 2017). In case of
qualitative method, the information can be gathered by some means of focused groups, surveys,
interviews etc. Whereas, in case of quantitative method, data can be gathered by means of
statistical or tabular information. In this, the researcher can use qualitative data because it will
help them to analyse the influence of new product launched by McDonald's on the overall
productivity rate of McDonald’s. By using qualitative data, the researcher will collect
information from focused groups and interviews from customers of McDonald’s in regard to
acknowledge their satisfaction from the newly launched products of McDonald's. This will also
help in analysing influence of it on increasing the overall productivity rate of an organisation.
IMPLEMENTING MARKETING RESEARCH PLAN
After gathering the data, it has been analysed that the implementation of idea for
developing some new product or service in order to gain attention of customers can be successful
if the cited firm consider referring to certain essential factors at the time of implementing their
plan. While launching new products such as Mc Tea and fresh beef burgers by McDonald's, they
offered it for free of cost in the beginning so that a wide variety of people will be able to try it
(McDonald and Wilson, 2016). Therefore, their interest can be generated to repurchase it.
This can also be considered as one of the efficient and tactical strategies by McDonald's.
Also, it is proven to be beneficial for them as well because when the customers will try these
products, they may not like the changes proposed by the quoted entity. This can in turn assist
McDonald's to think of bringing some changes in accordance to the likely perception of the
customers. Therefore, taking feedbacks of people on the basis of it can be considered as one of
the most appropriate and efficient options that can help McDonald's to make relevant
modifications and improvements wherever required. Although, while formulating the market
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research plan to undertake the analysis of new products launched by McDonald's, a risk
assessment has been performed at the implementation phase.
It is because at this time, the competitors might try to involve strategy to deteriorate the
image of McDonald's by affecting people who start losing their interest in the launch of new
products etc., (Gadsden, 2014). Therefore, here again at the time of the implementing the plan,
McDonald's can also try to involve various ways and strategies such as offers and discounts to
attract the customers. In addition, McDonald's is one of the leading food chain retailers;
therefore, it is quite hard for the competitors to let down their popularity.
Therefore, the next important step in the implementation phase is that McDonald’s
should stay clear where they will promote the launch of new products along with their stores
(Stelzner, 2014). It is considered as one of the most important steps because when they promote
their new products, in this case Mc Tea and fresh beef burgers will get more attention in areas
that are crowded by youngsters, teenagers as in the malls and shopping centres, etc. This can lead
to a better and more efficient process of implementation by enabling McDonald's to gain a higher
rate of satisfied customers with an increased rate of productivity as well as popularity.
It is very important to consider all these processes in an appropriate way because if
McDonald's fails to have a successful launch of new products, then the food retailers may have
to face a huge loss or make major changes and modifications to gain the attention of customers
(Sheth and Sisodia, 2015). Therefore, it is very important to focus on all these stages. It will help
in maintaining balance between all functions so that the overall popularity and productivity rate
of McDonald's will stay managed enough and in a positive way. Therefore, it will lead to a
successful implementation of new product launch by McDonald's to raise the satisfaction level of
the customers by together maximizing the rate of productivity.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Andrews, J.C. and Shimp, T.A., 2017. Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated
marketing communications. Nelson Education.
Grün, B. and Dolnicar, S., 2016. Response style corrected market segmentation for ordinal
data. Marketing Letters. 27(4). pp.729-741.
Hair Jr, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M. and Page, M. J., 2015. Essentials of business research methods.
Routledge.
Kotler, P., 2015. Framework for marketing management. Pearson Education India.
Luca, N. R., Hibbert, S. and McDonald, R., 2016. Towards a service-dominant approach to
social marketing. Marketing Theory. 16(2). pp.194-218.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2016. Marketing Plans: How to prepare them, how to profit from
them. John Wiley & Sons.
Ozanne, J.L., Davis, B. and Seregina, A., 2017. Assessing the societal impact of research: The
relational engagement approach. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 36(1). pp.1-14.
Sheth, J.N. and Sisodia, R.S., 2015. Does marketing need reform?: Fresh perspectives on the
future. Routledge.
Stelzner, M., 2014. 2014 Social media marketing industry report. Social media examiner, pp.1-
52.
Online
Gadsden, D., 2014. What is the Secret to McDonald’s Global Branding Success?. [Online].
Accessed through: <https://www.maistro.com/blogs/secret-mcdonalds-global-branding-
success/>.
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