Discuss about the Corporate Sustainability Reporting in Industry.
Brand report card is a technique that is used by the organizations to audit the strengths and weaknesses of a certain product characteristics and further comparing it with the strong brand in the same product category (Hbr.org 2018). McDonalds was a pioneer fast food industry and the brand excels in delivering customers all such benefits that the customers truly desire. McDonalds became one of the fastest leaders in the fast food industry and thus keeps their focus strong on the customer services. This also helps in bringing the way in which the product is projected and the ways in which he customer accepts it (Brexendorf, Bayus and Keller 2015). McDonalds helps in changing the customer’s brand. The organization has also a strict focus on operating efficiently and at all different levels of the organization so that the costs can be kept competitive within the market.
Mc Donald’s clearly understand what the customers actually want and delivering the same. The main success of the organization is to lay major emphasis on the satisfaction of the customers. The staffs representing McDonalds is encouraged to be very friendly and are taught to provide this services with a smile. The organization focuses on customer satisfaction by providing hot foods, short wait-times and excellent services. The operational competitive strategy of McDonalds focuses on speed, cost and nutrition. Their main priority is to make the customers really happy. The organization finds various techniques to make the consumers highly satisfied with their fast food services. Higher quality products are provided to their customers. They have also a very strict regiment for food and safety quality standards. Mc Donald’s has the largest share that exist in the fast food industry and 10% global share.
McDonalds stays relevant with its customers by introducing varieties of menus such as happy meals, drive –in and drive through besides healthy meals (Mcdonalds.com. 2018). In strong brands such as Mc Donald’s brand equity is linked to both the actual quality for the services and products and also to the different intangible factors. Without losing sights of the core strength for the products, McDonalds tries to stays on the top-most edge in the product arena. It is highly important to keep pace with the customer’s preferences requirements and is also subjected to change in a periodic manner and is thus relevant with its customer. When the potential customers purchase any product from Mc Donald’s, the customers exchanges the prices to obtain value in return.
McDonalds with the help of its brand innovation in the form of McBike helps in connecting with the target audiences. McBikes helps in keeping the track of their customers and also helps in retaining an affinity with the customer’s lives. Identification of the current trends also helps in crucial role in their lives and also should connect them to the brand. The right blend of quality for the product, design, cost, features and prices is actually difficult to achieve but is quite worthy for the efforts involved.
Customer value based pricing is setting the price that is based on buyer’s perception for all the values. McDonalds can design its products and initiate a marketing program and then sets its price. Price is a crucial part of marketing mix and is further followed by various marketing mix decisions. The pricing strategy is mainly based on the customer’s perception of value and is good. Mc Donald’s is recently addressing new relevance problems that address all the issues present in past. McWrap that is a fresh sandwich wrap contains vegetables such as lettuce and cucumbers. Mc. Donald’s also faces success that addresses various other issues that are relevant in the past. Many of the products that are originated are generally in frozen form or are either pre-formed.
Effective consumer value based pricing includes the values the consumers generally received for the products. The company first assesses the needs and value perceptions of its customers. Later on a target price is set that is completely based on the consumer perception of values. When the potential customers purchase any product from Mc Donald’s, the customers exchanges the prices to obtain value in return. Effective pricing should also focus on all the value for the product that is ultimately provided to the customers. The organization also assesses the needs of the customers and value perception. Mc Donald’s holds the largest market share in the fast food industry in all over America. Several pricing strategies like price bundling are applied. The concept of offering combination of different varieties of products helps in reducing the overall price. This further encourages all the customers to buy several products that are known as price bundling in the form of Happy Meal ’and‘ Big Mac meal. McDonalds also uses psychological pricing technique to attract the potential customers with items costing 99p.
Strategic positioning is applied by McDonalds to increase the sales of the organization or performing the same activity in a different manner. Through proper brand positioning a company becomes a leading performer within the industry. The brand positioning for McDonalds is completely based on its customer base. It focuses on teenagers and children mostly as their potential target customers. It’s positioning and strategy is directed to satisfy this market sector. McDonalds has proved itself to be a friendly low cost restaurant within the fast food business. The company has a low cost strategy and narrow scope for the customer base strategy. In the current times, the firm has also broadened its scope to appeal the customers. In the recent times, due to decrease in sales, the company has launched various ways to make its menu healthier for their customers. Major focus is led on cutting the delivering time for the products and cutting the product’s cost. Modern and advanced techniques are further used to make the job more convenient. This further focuses on lowering down the cost of food and delivery time. Effective strategy is applied in each and every operational activities of the business. This strategy is known throughout all its business operation.
McDonalds has been able to position itself on the fore front among all the fast-food technology. It has also set the standards required for the rest of the industry. McDonalds is considered to be one of the most successful brands on the planet and is also successful in all of its operational areas and has proved its consistency and efficiency. The fast food industry is expanding at a great extent and McDonalds initiate various techniques to gain the competitive advantages (Homburg, Schwemmle and Kuehnl 2015). The fast food company has bought organic and healthy food in the market along with the fast foods. It is currently ranked to be one of the most important brands in all over the world and is also among the most frequently restaurants.
It has also been able to serve in more than 100 countries and millions of customers purchase the products every day. The branding success of McDonald’s is undeniable. The major key element behind the marketing success and branding of marketing is experimentation and segmentation. McDonalds has also been able it maintains its brand success at an international level (Nyadzayo and Khajehzadeh 2016). The marketing strategy of the organization mostly relies on the uniformity of its products. Positioning the products and services to attract the target audience is necessary by focusing the marketing efforts on segmentation. Target marketing is the major key to success of McDonalds and through brand recognizition it has able to expand its business profitability.
Various organizations do not have only one brand but creates and retains varieties of brands for various market segments. Brand act as an umbrella for various market segment and is also holds different power. At all level of hierarchy, brand contributes to the overall equity of portfolio through their ability to make the customers aware about all the products and leads to create favorable association with them. Each brand has also its own boundaries that prevent the overlapping of two brands within a same portfolio. McDonalds has relatively large number of strong connections that can be described in three different levels for the customer connection, this includes functional, higher-order emotional and brand differentiation (Baker, Donthu and Kumar 2016). McDonalds gathers the insights of the market to properly understand the needs of the customer, values, lifestyle and buying behavior of its customers. Technology has been able to change the way through which a consumer search for their products and services.
Brand portfolio strategy of McDonalds enables the firm to maximize market coverage and also reduces the brand overlap through deployment, effective creation and managing multiple brands within an organization. This also serves the brand to effectively target all the major key segments within the organization (Keller, 2017). The firm works together to increase the sales of the organization instead of competing against each other for the attention of their customers. Effective brand portfolio and its connection with the hierarchical level results in obtaining a clear idea about the want for the customer need, want and desire.
A brand is usually made up of various market levels that can easily be trademarked in the form of symbols, logos, slogans and packaging. Brands that are strong in the market mix and match the elements that enable them to perform various brands related functions. This leads to reinforce or enhance the brand’s consumer awareness and its image that help them to protect the brand in both legal and competitive. The Managers also appreciates the particular roles for all the various marketing activities that help in building the brand equity for the organization (Chandon, Laurent and Valette-Florence 2016).
McDonalds makes excellent use of its overall marketing activities that includes promotions, media advertizing and sponsorship. The organization also reinforces its major key values for its originality, high quality products and efficient services. Managers plays a crucial role in reinforcing or enhancing consumer awareness about the new products and helps them to protect the organization’s brand in a both competitive and legal. They provide detailed information related to the product that shows the product requirement for whom and when. Moreover, an organization brand is also associated with the place, price and person so that the brand image for the product can be refined or enhanced. McDonald’s uses ‘traditional advertizing techniques` that is best suited for the ‘pull functions’ so that consumer demand is increased for a particular or given product. This also leads to pushing the products through their distributors. Moreover, brand makes effective use of all of its resources and takes adequate measure to ensure that brand essence is similar for all the activities.
McDonalds clearly understands the relevance of brand image to its potential customers. Through efficient technologies, the companies can easily order food with the help of Have Happy Meal, Mcmaccas and giving toys to the consumers. Brand image and all of its different perceptions, attitudes and beliefs that the target customers associate with company. Brand manager is efficient enough to understand the importance of the brand value and making it aware to the customers. There is a seen improvement in the perception of the consumers for the brands that has helped it to post its best sales figures in the last six years. Operational metrics and brand perception goes hand in hand. The firm have been able to make improvement in their menu and also maintain effective communication with their employees. They are also heading and moving towards a direction that the customers wants them to go. McDonald’s has focused highly on modernizing the restaurants in the current years and have also introduced the concept of re-branding.. The brand value of McDonalds has increased with effective and sophisticated online platform had source its branding and marketing talent from across the world. In the recent era of technology, customers focuses on faster delivery, better values and better brand from the organization . McDonalds should work accordingly with all the technologies and concept so that the long-term profitability and brand image can be improved (Godey et al. 2016). McDonalds has adopted an effective global marketing strategy and the organization has also adopted various measures to provide maximum satisfaction to their customers
Brand equity for an organization should be carefully constructed. McDonalds is still thriving and is a powerful international brand. The major strategic that the firm uses in tailoring its advertisement is to a particular demographics. McDonald has used demographic segmentation strategy where the major parameter is age. The major target segments are youth, children, and young urban family. To attract children, McDonalds has used Happy Meal and each children are gifted a toy, thus using it as a strategy to retain their customers in the long-run.
McDonald practices a comprehensive framework for monitoring and training its franchises so that they are adhered to the services, value and quality propositions that is offered by their customers. A sophisticated supplier distribution system and networked operation is used that enables the company to achieve consistent quality and product taste. The brand name of the organization is so strong that it brings high income to the organization and also fulfils all the expectation of its purchaser. The brand excels in truly delivering all the benefits that area truly desired by the consumers. Proper support is given to the brand that is supported and sustained over the long-run by the organization. McDonald’s brand name is supported in the long-run by the organization through by effective in investing in the research and also for the long-term development for their marketing programs. This helps in reducing risk, simplifying customer decisions and also establishing expectations to crate strong brand image of the organization.
Effective and strong brands usually make frequent and effective use of detailed brand audits. McDonalds designed their brand audits that include the detailed internal description about the marketing of the brand also known as brand inventory. McDonalds uses brand audits to obtain a clear picture about the products and services that are offered and furthermore it’s branding and marketing strategy. Quantitative measures are been applied to track the information related to the customers behaviors, attitudes and perceptions. The mangers of McDonalds use brand audits and tracking that specifies the major outcomes and also includes the latest findings that is gathered by the organization in an annual basis (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2015). The brand equity report issued by the management does not only describe the happenings of the brands but also provides the reasons behind it.
In the recent scenario, McDonalds has been able to revamp its entire kitchen and serving fresh products with high quality to their customers. McDonalds ‘Make Your Own’ menu approach is determining its brand value association. From the perspectives of a brand asst, it is reassuring to view the descriptor like ‘The Golden Arches’ that has created a connection of the customers between the brand and its identity. Effective brand and product management that has set up the competitive brand management.
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