McDonald's Case

McDonald's, the long time leader of fast food industry has been growing rapidly during the past 60 years. Through franchising and establishing partnership, the company gradually expanded its market domestic market while entering foreign markets successfully at the same time. Meanwhile, giving emphasis on its unique QSC&V philosophy, public relations and the demand of customers, McDonald's established a competitive operating model which maintained its industry leadership for decades.

Efforts on marketing can be seen in each step the company has made. Whenever innovation happens or new products been released, tremendous marketing campaigns would be conducted. To cooperate with the company's strategy of going global, lot of marketing efforts were made to generate global exposure, including supporting Olympic Games. What shouldn't be ignored is, the company's focus on public relationship can also be regarded as a form of marking activity again, since the brand has been rooted into the community.

However, the company has grown too fast to look back. Devoting into rapid global expansion, the company ignored the necessary monitor and supervise of existing restaurants, which should have been maintained at a certain level. More than that, extraordinary capital was held by the expansion and acquirements. Due to these mistakes, criticizes on McDonald's quality of service and its commitment on customer satisfaction were raised and as a result, the entire operating system was influenced and the company reported its loss.

Apparently, having so many restaurants with unequal standards and in distinguished business environments in the world, the company lacked a consistent measurement and standard for all its restaurant. Without showing customers the company's commitment on improving the quality with substantial moves, any forms of marketing campaign cannot work. Even worse, the competition was increasingly intense, while sales of McDonald's flats, competitors such as Wendy's began to snatch the market share.