Marketing Strategy

1. Identify the problems confronting McDonald's U.K. and list them from the most to the least critical. For each problem identified, explain your reasoning.

• Negative Images & Impressions from Media, Documentary, Press and others: Negative news and documentaries showing the lack of health in their menu is affecting negatively their image.

• Health Issue: The World Health Organization is creating conscious about the effects of obesity in global health and economic development, Mcdonald’s fast food lacks of health quality standards and their soft drinks, French fries, high sugar and highly oiled snacks are the main reason for overweight and obesity.

• Layout, Design: According to the case study, it is observed that Starbucks has made McDonald’s restaurants look sterile and out of date. The McDonald’s restaurant design of yellow, white, and red colors with plastic furniture has made people feel boring and dry. Due to the trends, consumers need something different and new that can refresh them.

• Service Standard Decreases: Mcdonald’s also faces problems with the service provided by their staff and employees. Their customer service performance is going down and by consequence affecting their sales.

• Competition: Although McDonald’s is the clear leader of the fast food industry in terms of revenues generated and restaurants established, they still faces competition from other fast food chains, such as Burger King Corporation, Wendy’s International, Carl’s Junior, Yo! Sushi, Jack in the Box Inc, etc.

2. Some problems you identified in Question 1 may require a "quick fix" in the short run, while others may require a major shift in company strategy. Assuming that you cannot focus on all the problems at once, suggest the order in which the issues should be addressed and suggest an approach to solving each problem.

• Quality of food: McDonald’s is a very famous and delicious fast food restaurant, recognized by their high standard and quality of their food. However, according to the case study, most of the problems that occur are because of their menu tends to be unhealthy and doesn’t provide many healthy choices. One recommendation could be to add in more choices and options for their salads and their dressings, more organic food and drinks.

• Services: According to the case study, McDonald’s services have been slipping; becoming inefficient and inconsistent, so as their cleanliness. Therefore, as a result of a bad service, customers will start looking for other options, which lastly affects the business. It is important to develop high qualified human resources by providing training for their employees.

• Design and Layout: It has showed that the design and layout in McDonald’s has becoming boring, dry and out to date. However, McDonald’s is trying to get into the trend by redecorate and refurbish their restaurants and the customs and uniforms of their staff.

3. By 2007, it seemed that the decisions made by McDonald's U.K. management had begun to pay off. However, McDonald's U.K. still lags behind the performance of other regions in the European division. Considering your responses to Questions 1 and 2, identify problems that may still exist and suggest actions to be taken.

• Service: Customers who had experienced a bad service at McDonald, will definitely remember all the wrong from the venue keeping a poor image even though they had received good service at previous visits. Therefore, as a suggestion, McDonald’s can run campaigns, events, or advertisements that can gain back customers to dine in McDonald’s by reinforce the friendliness of McDonald’s environment.

• Quality of food: McDonald’s is a franchise restaurant, and it is hard to maintain the high standard and good quality of the food because their food mostly comes in

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