Mcdonalds Customers Customer Relations at McDonald's

McDonald's is a company that has increasingly come to face a dilemma regarding its relationship with its primary customer base. The fast-food giant is incomparably successful, having achieved a singular dominance in its sector and having likewise established an enviable brand recognition on a global basis. And yet, in terms of customer relations, the company is struggling today to achieve a positive resolution to its public image problem. In spite of its popularity and success, McDonald's is viewed as a major culprit both in the direct impact that its food has had on the public health and the indirect impact levied by its cultural connotations. As the discussion hereafter will show, this view has begun to have an impact on the fast-food chain's image-management strategy. Below, we explore the difficult customer relations balance that McDonald's must strike in simultaneously evolving to offer its customers healthier dining options and in protecting the characteristics and comestibles that have already helped to make it a top name in the food-services industry.

For McDonald's, the last decade has seen a major change in the way that consumers approach food choices. The rising epidemics of heart disease, diabetes and obesity have all forced us to reexamine the decisions we make as consumers. In turn, McDonald's has come under intense scrutiny for its role in damaging the public health. Indeed, as the leading fast-food purveyor, McDonald's is at the top of a list of food service retailers who are perceived as contributing to negative nutritional behavior and to all its related consequences.

An article by Bowman & Vinyard (2004) confirms this perception, reporting both on the rising trends relating to certain negative health conditions and on their connection to fast-food consumption. According to Bowman & Vinyard, "in the U.S., 64.5% of adults are overweight and 30.5% are obese [27]....

Obesity increases the risk of many health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, hypertension, cancer, and diabetes [28 -- 30]. It is important that fast-food consumers should be aware of the nutritional consequences of eating fast food." (Bowman & Vinyard, 167)
This has placed McDonald's in a very challenging position with respect to consumer expectations. The convenience, familiarity, affordability and taste of its food are all contributing factors to McDonald's success. Improving the health of its menu offerings is critical but it is also essential that the company finds ways of doing this that don't eclipse these competitive advantages. This is elaborated in the article by Tsao (2002), which weighs the challenges facing McDonald's as it simultaneously works to alter its image and sustain its appeal to an established customer base. Tsao reports that the fast-food giant had been in something of an economic downslide as the public focus shifted to greater patterns of health consciousness, as its own market became more competitive and as McDonald's simply reached a plateau in terms of being able to expand its well-established brand in new markets.

Accordingly, the Tsao article reports that McDonald's would contend with a number practical difficulties in terms of meeting changing consumer expectations. With the patterns of consumer behavior beginning to shift toward health-consciousness and nutritional value, McDonald's has had to reexamine its credo of convenience at all costs. As the Tsao article reports, "it's a very large ship to turn around,' says S&P equity analyst Dennis Milton. And not only is McDonald's a mature company, with 30,000 stores worldwide, but its primary business is saturated: The market share that burger chains hold among all quick-service restaurants has fallen from 37.1% in 1997 to 35.3% in 2002, according to Chicago-based market researcher Technomic." (Tsao, 2002) In attempting to address this condition,…