Services Marketing : McDonalds Restaurants and the Prevalence
Question:
Discuss about the Services Marketing for McDonalds Restaurants and the Prevalence.
Answer:
The aim of this essay is to discuss my experiences with Mc Donald and reflect on its services. McDonald is popular and fastest growing restaurants in the world (Crawford, 2015). It is the world’s largest restaurant serving food and drink to 35 million customers per day. It provides food both of vegetarian and non-vegetarian selections and expands the menu keeping in mind the customer’s preferences and their lifestyle (Alheritiere et al., 2013). It is one of the organizations to earn high score in terms of people centricity, individual learning, diversity and inclusion and organizational learning” (Thornton et al., 2016). The reason for writing a reflective essay on this organization is my personal positive experience with its restaurants. It is also popular for its range of desserts. The essay presents a flowchart of the back-stage as well as the front stage operations of this business. Using this flowchart, the significance of the service encounter is explained. Further, the essay includes the analysis of the managerial implications of the service encounter.
The front stage operations of Mc Donald mainly include provision of information to the customer services by various means flyers, electronic display of menu, followed by order taking, billing (invoice of the transaction, verbal and machine display of the amount due) and payment via vouchers or coupons (Gerhardt et al., 2014).
The detailed flow chart is given below-
The back-stage operations in Mc Donald include purchase of the fresh ingredients such as tomato, lettuce, import of food products, and maintenance of the perishable goods. It is followed by monitor of the appropriate storage conditions, cleanliness of plates and trays as well as dining place, updating the prices of different food items or notification of arrival of new combo packages, update on websites and online services for customers having membership (Gerhardt et al., 2014).
Mc Donald is excellent in its consultation services as I enjoy the way in which they explain about different combo packages and help as to which one to avail. I love the ambience provided by McDonald which ensures quality of food, cleanliness, and comfortable sitting arrangements. I feel relaxed and consider it a source of stress release as it provides pleasant atmosphere at reasonable price. For me it is the best place to hang out with friend and families. Since they are never jam packed with customers or need to wait long hours after placing order and never asked to leave even if one sits for long hours, it is the best place to make business deals, resolve issues or make plan any informal events. As per my observation and research it provides 100% client satisfaction and justifies its philosophy of “Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value” (Alheritiere et al., 2013). The hospitality services of McDonald are outstanding. It supplies fresh food with delivery time being not more than one minute. Its soft standards are attracting to customer who make multiple visits. The staff is always well groomed and is always updated regarding the products and contents. They always deal with customers in a positive way and always greet with smile. Clients can also redeem coupons through newspaper inserts. It attracts the customers as Mc Donald also lays emphasis on reducing calories and fats content in cold drinks and burgers due increase in obesity patients in the world (Crawford, 2015). There are no “performance gap”, “communication gap” and “standard and specification gap” in this organization (Alheritiere et al., 2013). It products of paper and plastics are recyclable. However, I find “listening gap” in some but not all its outlets which may be due to rush in pick hours (Rowley et al., 2016). That apart I find the services quite reliable and responsive. This is one place where I never returned dissatisfied.
The production process of Mc Donald includes import of fresh meats and vegetables from various sources to the restaurant. Fresh ingredients such as spinach, lettuce are purchased o a daily basis from a local store. Soft drinks are delivered in every outlet before its opening and are refrigerated. It well maintains the frozen and frosting conditions. The organization never compromises with the quality. The chefs are diligent in assembling all the ingredients in the dish as well as drinks in less than a minute. Staff at the backstage works hard in preparing and updating information on display boards, websites (Block et al., 2013). This websites are well designed with attracting color combination and eye-catching images of different types of burgers and combo meal. Mc Donald has intelligent product managers that develop unique pricing strategy (limit pricing, cost-plus pricing, value based pricing etc). On an annual basis professionals are recruited to redesign the outlet. The backstage staff is also responsible for maintenance of appropriate ventilation, lighting and sitting area (Smagghe, 2014). They apply “value pricing and bundling strategies” such as happy meal, family meal to enhance their sales volume. This option saves extra money which is irresistible for the customers. The promotional pricing such as “extra $20 off” on breakfast meals increases customer’s base (Mehta & Mehta, 2013). They must regularly collect customer feedback to maintain the old expectation and simultaneously form the new expectation (Rowley & McMurtrey, 2016). The overall leader and corporate values are reflected in its customer services and team work.
McDonald in Australia both service provider and franchise must develop innovative themes for floor layouts to increase the footfalls (Mehta & Mehta, 2013). It should set up quality control standards for all the individual franchises for constant monitoring and management of issues. I personally feel that all the outlets of Mc Donald must emphasize on the health factor (Thornton et al., 2016). There is an increasing prevalence of child obesity across the world and McDonald’s fast food consumption has been recognized as one of the primary causative factor due to presence of high calories (Rowley & McMurtrey, 2016). The food items of McDonalds also contains Trans-fat and beef oil, which is harmful for health (Crawford, 2015). In addition to quality, the focus should be on nutrition as well. However, it should work more on its corporate social responsibility. McDonald must decrease its calorie and fat content in its food items. It was evident from the research paper of Gerhardt et al., (2014) that MC Donald continues to sell two of its most famous specialties “Big macs and Chicken McNuggets” which were identified by food quality investigators to be toxic (Yuece et al., 2014).. This might have serious implication on the public health which may decrease the overall efficiency of production and services. Increase in health consciousness caused several people to stop eating at Mc Donald (Thornton et al., 2016). If such circumstances continue, the company’s revenue will decline significantly. The reports of Yuece, (2012) reveal that more number of franchisees are disappointed with system forced payment. With the expansion of the business, the payment for the use of “notorious fast-food brand” increases. Consequently, several franchisees have opted to sell their businesses. Keeping in mind the environmental issues, I suggest McDonald to use more green packaging solutions as a part of their marketing strategies. I recommend avoiding the using of HFC-22, which may lead to decrease in customer (Mehta & Mehta, 2013). Therefore, such unethical practices may not be in the good interest of the company’s image. The organization provides its employees with great upward mobility and I feel that the corporate culture displayed in the restaurants is aligned with the corporate values.
Conclusively, McDonald is a cheery, multi-national cooperation that boast of its quality services and good food. The “state-of-art technology” employed by the company makes its production process faster. I have learned from thorough literature research about the demerits of the organization, which I was not aware of earlier. It may become stronger if it works on its weak areas. Overall McDonald has undergone several changes since last decade. If McDonald uses right strategies and overcome its challenges, it will definitely continue to be a winner in the market.
References
Alheritiere, A., Montois, S., Galinski, M., Tazarourte, K., & Lapostolle, F. (2013). Worldwide relation between the number of McDonald’s restaurants and the prevalence of obesity. Journal of internal medicine, 274(6), 610-611.
Block, J. P., Condon, S. K., Kleinman, K., Mullen, J., Linakis, S., Rifas-Shiman, S., & Gillman, M. W. (2013). Consumers’ estimation of calorie content at fast food restaurants: cross sectional observational study.
Crawford, A. (2015). McDonald’s: A Case Study in Glocalization. Journal of Global Business Issues, 9(1), 11.
Gerhardt, S., Hazen, S., & Lewis, S. (2014). Small Business Marketing Strategy Based on McDonald’s. ASBBS Proceedings, 21(1), 271.
Mehta, G. B., & Mehta, S. S. (2013). AN OBSERVATIONAL FIELD STUDY OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AT MCDONALD’S. BUSINESS STUDIES JOURNAL, 19.
Rowley, B., & McMurtrey, M. E. (2016). McDonald’s and the Triple Bottom Line: A Case Study of Corporate Sustainability. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 11(1), 33.
Smagghe, D. (2014). Comment on letter to the editor from F. Lapostolle:‘Worldwide relation between the number of McDonald’s restaurants and the prevalence of obesity’. Journal of internal medicine,276(2), 199-200.
Thornton, L. E., Ball, K., Lamb, K. E., McCann, J., Parker, K., & Crawford, D. A. (2016). The impact of a new McDonald’s restaurant on eating behaviours and perceptions of local residents: A natural experiment using repeated cross-sectional data. Health & place, 39, 86-91.
Yuece, I. (2012). SWOT Analysis of McDonald’s and Derivation of Appropriate Strategies.
