McDonalds also places strong emphasis on marketing to children, including the use of playgrounds in its restaurants. As a result, McDonalds is able to maintain some pricing power over its customers and to attract customers to its restaurants despite strong competition from a wide number of sources.
Issues and Challenges: McDonald's operates in a number of mature markets, where growth is slow. Growth is now focused not only on overseas markets but for the most part on less desirable overseas markets, the China and India excepted. This has slowed the pace of growth for the company in recent years. Another challenge has been the economic downturn that saw many customers reduce their meals away from home. The result of these two challenges has been that McDonald's saw a reduction in its revenue in fiscal 2009 (MSN Moneycentral, 2010).
The childhood obesity issue is the latest in a string of challenges faced by McDonalds from a variety of health and environmental activists. This particular challenge has come with class action lawsuits (Holguin, 2003) and has forced McDonalds to face bans on toys in Happy Meals, which had previously served as an inducement for children to eat at their restaurants (Allen, 2010). There are also negative public relations consequences for these legal actions as well, that could convince some parents to keep their children away from McDonalds.
Course of Action Recommended: McDonald's cannot please all the people all of the time. They are a natural target for activists and the obesity challenges are just another in a string of similar risks faced by the company. A legal fund should be set aside to fight the claims, but the company should also be prepared to make subtle changes to its menus to ward off such future claims. Dramatic action, however, is not needed.
The company should also continue to focus on growth opportunities where they exist in the developing world. The best opportunities may be gone, but whatever today's best opportunities are should be pursued. Shareholder expectations should be managed accordingly, however, so that past growth and profitability levels are not expected.
The company should approach the economic downturn as an opportunity to reduce costs and to reign in its debt levels. McDonald's is still making substantial profits, but the debt level is...
McDonald's Integrated Marketing Campaign This paper is divided into two distinct sections. The first chapter is based on literature reviews of various scholarly works that are related to the topic of integrated marketing campaign that are also relevant to the McDonald marketing campaign that was created to celebrate the inherent democracy of the McDonald's brand. The first chapter is further divided into three parts; the first section mainly focus on advertising
According to Kerin, et al., (2003) all employees posses some form of power to interrupt the smooth running of operations by deciding to be uncooperative in the production processes, or just by terminating their services. Workers may abide to the power of the company, though they usually maintain a strong interest in their employment. Thus, employees and employers, to certain degree, are interdependent. As such, the company cannot depend only
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Financial Analysis of Mcdonald A financial analysis McDonald's Cor Company Overview McDonald Corporation is a global company that conducts business in 117 countries. McDonald operates 32,737 restaurants and 26,338 franchises in the highly competitive fast food industry. Since 1940, McDonald has built a loyal customer base by continuing dedicating to customer service and providing high quality fast food for customers. Presently, McDonald could boast of over 60 millions customers and the company
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