Introduction:

McDonalds is one of the biggest fast food companies in the market share today. It has been running in over 119 countries, as well as they have acquired over 31,000 restaurants in the world now. McDonalds brand mission is to be customers favourite place and way to eat, they are aligned around a global strategy called the Plan to Win, they also committed to continuously improving their operations and enhancing their customers experience. As we all know that McDonalds had successfully achieved their goal through out the years. (aboutmcdonalds, 2012) Apart from this, as McDonalds is a worldwide company, they also had the social responsibility to return the community; therefore, the Ronald McDonald House Charities was established to build up their social image. Unfortunately, the market share is not only for McDonalds because there are still a lot other competitors in the market, like KFC and Burger King. So, McDonalds need a good marketing strategy to conquer other enemies and retain their position because the competition in the market is hypercompetitive. As all we know, the successful marketing strategy for McDonalds is based on their innovative and creative promotion and great marketing research in order to keep consumers loyalty. Eventually, this project will examine the success through three main sessions, which are marketing research, the marketing mix and the competitor strategies.

Marketing Research:
Every marketing strategy starts with the marketing research. In the fast food market, McDonalds confronts competition form other businesses, in order to maintain the market share, McDonalds needs to identify the needs and wants of customers, and creating the right marketing mix in order to keep customers loyalty so as to build up a long term relationship with their customers. Marketing research helps identifying the change of customers wills and anticipates how the changes will affect the sales figure. 1.Research method Market researches done by McDonalds consider everything that affect buying decisions. (The times 100, 2012) The buying decisions could be affected by a wide range of factors, including psychological factors, like what image does the product give or how the consumer feels when purchasing. Next, the economy changes could also affect the buying decisions, for example, the rising living standards. According to Salvam (2009), McDonalds used both qualitative and quantitative data are developed in the research activities. After McDonalds had collect the data, they will identify how appropriate the companys products are for the future; the quality of employees and how well trained they are to offer the best services to customer and the financial resources that available for marketing etc. 2.Customer satisfaction The number of customers in the market is limited; it is essential to retain people once they have become customers to build long-term and successful business. The marketing research helps McDonalds to indentify the types of customers and determine the type of products and services offered, price range, promotion strategies and even where the restaurants located. The Happy Meal is one of the famous product line McDonalds had produced, which targeted to young customers, the Happy Meal is served with food and a toy, McDonalds ally with Hollywood studios such as Walt Disney, consequently, the Happy meal had become one of the most successful childrens cultural icons on the globe (Hong, 2009) and brings about a huge income to McDonalds every single year. Apart from this, to respond the global criticism and the negative effect of the documentary Super Size Me on McDonalds are selling junk food, McDonalds had introduce the more healthy food, such as salad and fruits to their menu, so as to associate their brand image with healthier food. This is one of the examples that shows how McDonalds consider the social factor. These are all the examples of what McDonalds done to achieve the needs and wants of customers.

How McDonalds influences their customers The marketing mix

It is known that McDonalds used both polycentric and geocentric approach in creating their marketing mix. 1. Product It is known that most products go through a product life cycle, which sees all kinds of product will eventually go to the decline stage. The marketing research discussed in the pervious part is vitally important to understand the changing wants and needs of customers. McDonald's constantly works to satisfy customers by developing new products to appeal to customers. For example, McDonald's introduced a variety of salads to appeal to the healthier conscious customers (Yahoo! Contributor Network, 2005), and recently, McDonalds added a new product line named great taste of America so as to attract more customers. (UK McDonalds, 2012) 2. Price As we all know that customers draw their own mental picture of what a product is worth, therefore, it is important for McDonalds to know the customers perception of value. (Brassington and Pettitt, 2006) McDonalds will change their product price time to time based on the result of the marketing research, and offer the most reasonable price for the customers. 3. Promotions Every company has their own way to promote their products; McDonalds is no different. The promotion strategy of McDonalds could be classified into two aspects, which are the advertising promotion and sales promotion. 3.1 Advertisement Advertisement is conducted on TV, radio, online, poster site, and all kinds of media that around our daily life. It is known that positive emotion can very effective in creating memorable and persuasive messages (Brassington and Pettitt, 2006), this is also why the cheerful senses are always used in McDonalds commercials. Apart from this, customer-oriented appeals are also be used in McDonalds advertisement. To advertise different types of customers, McDonalds had different strategies, for example, they had co-operate with Walt Disney to produce toys that can attract children. Toy giveaways are a major promotion weapon in McDonalds battle for fast-food market share. McDonalds have long put toys in kids meal to build traffic and encourage repeat visit from families.

3.2 Sales Promotion McDonalds had developed numerous of effective promotional campaign to attract more customers, and sales promotion is an aspect that they heavily rely on. It is believed that by adding extra value to the product, over and above the normal product offering, thus creating an extra inducement to buy or try them. (Brassington and Pettitt, 2006) McDonalds strategy is to offer quality food quickly to customers at a good value. The pricing structure for McDonalds over years has supported this message, over the years, McDonalds has ran many promotions to increase product sales. For instance, they offer student offer, which gives out free hamburger, cheeseburger or McFlurry Original with the customers purchase an Extra Value Meal with a valid student ID card. Furthermore, McDonalds also offer different types of coupons frequently in order to stimulate the demand and increase customers interest and desire to purchase their products. (McDonalds, 2012) 4. Place Place, is about the physical location and the distribution points for products. McDonalds had their special menu in different shops all over the world. For instance, 'Maharaja McBurger' is a vegetarian burger marketed in India; 'Prosperity Burger' is popular in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore; McDonald's offers 'Halal' food in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Indonesia, Malaysia etc.

Competitor Strategies:
Nowadays, many fast food shops are building up in the market, which means the market share for fast food shop is becoming more competitive. As we all know, no company can be successful without a good competitor strategy. McDonalds has become one of the wellknown and famous fast food companies today because they have had an innovated and effective competitor strategy to conquer their enemies The major competitors of McDonalds included Burger King, Doctors Associates and Yumburger. (RQ Admit & Company, 2012) Among all of the competitors strategies McDonalds had applied, there are three main obvious ideas, which can help them establishing a good reputation and popularity in the market. New Production Strategy: As McDonalds had expanded internationally, in order to keep consumers loyalty and attract peoples attention, McDonalds designs creative productions regularly which are both special and delicious, such as shake shake chips and new version of burger. (Clark, 2012) Furthermore, in order to spread further their market, they provided vegetarian food, which allowed customers that are vegetarian to purchase their product. Apart from this, McDonalds has already established a great reputation in the market; therefore, they will be always exploiting their brands reputation and consumers desire to promote the new product. This is one of the effective ways, which could assist customers to gain their popularity and promote their new production. Healthy Food strategy: In this new generation, a new demand in the market has appeared. People are now craving for a healthy life and are more willing to purchase healthier food. Thus, on purpose of reaching customers new demand, McDonalds had change their products from the traditional high-fat and oily food to food that contained lower calories and fat, as well as they had begun to provide some new choices of food, which are much healthier and more palatable, such as snack size fruit, walnut salad and yogurt parfait. (HubPages, 2012) Charity strategy: Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMDH) is one of the independent and registered charities, whose mission is to provide comfort and safety place and environment for poor family and some ill or injured children. (McDonalds, 2012) There are some reasons why they built a charity. First of all, it is one of the unique strategies, which can make people feel that they have associated with the donation of the charity, after they purchased the food. Therefore, their reputation and population will increase in the market and this will help McDonald creating a more positive image and change peoples rooted negative thought on fast food industry. Furthermore, RMDH can build up their

brand name with co-operating with some charities to organize some activities. This is because it is one of the essential ways to let more people to be interested in McDonalds. Thus, they can keep being one of the huge groups in the marketing share.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that McDonalds is a successful company. The success of McDonalds could be seen in the comprehensive and effective marketing research, the purposeful marketing mix created that satisfied customers needs and wants and the overwhelming competitor strategies, which helped McDonalds to keep their market share.

Reference:
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