What I’ve learned from analyzing McDonalds’s business strategy
McDonald’s has a very strong strategic team, of all the strategies applied to the core business, one thing that seems to boost its efficiency is the production and operations of its business, by recognizing quickly the changes in the market demand, McDonald’s is quick to respond by radically changing its main favorite beef menu into mainly chicken based food and taking advantage of the growing demands on beverages such as coffee, and last but not least is its ability to be flexible in adopting the digital by customizing the customer service into highly personalized menu options, McDonald’s is also maximizing its human resource and research development and able to save the human resources needed in a single restaurant and lower the employees stress level.
The research development team of McDonald’s seems to be working very hard in providing many options for customers to order McDonald’s menu. From apps to self-order kiosk McDonald’s is able to deliver quick order for more customers than before, lowering the order waiting time and increase productivity.
More and more people are aware of their health status and well-being, this is the right time for McDonald’s to be able to maximize its production & operation strategy, by focusing on a more diverse healthier food McDonald’s is able give more value to its customers. McDonald’s also learning the new trend of ‘less is more’, it is sacrificing the portion of quantity of its menus to give better quality of its products. This leads to a competitive advantage and superior profitability and profit growth.
Digitalization, efficiency production, and trading quantity for quality, these are McDonald’s strategy in achieving great customer responsiveness. In terms of innovation, McDonald’s also stays ahead of competition by providing customers with more options of healthier meals, cheaper prices and fast service. It is also expanding the current restaurant into more diverse styles such as McCafe, more smoothies and ice cream options, and free wi-fi.
Yes, McDonald’s has grown so big that it is able to diversified its business model that is the property business into corporate level, with acquiring strategic places all over the country, McDonald’s is able to capitalize its assets for the future if they wish to rent or sell to other corporations. One other rare resource that McDonald’s has is its proud very own training center or McDonald’s Hamburger University that will provide a never ending human resources into generations to come. This are some of the rare operations resources that McDonald’s has and very few big fast food restaurants have. Other fast food restaurant might have the same integrated inbound logistics supply chain but to be able to create its very own University for regenerations is something that not easy to replicate.
McDonald’s competitive position in the fast food industry is the leader for sometimes and has been very consistent compare to other restaurants. This has been contributed by its sustainable ability to deliver consistent brand for all family’s experiences across 120 countries. McDonald’s also flexible enough to adapt with the current trend like digitalization to gain customer loyalty initiatives. The overall secret to sustainability initiatives for any fast-food restaurant business is the continuation of differentiating itself through food innovation from time to time by accepting reviews from the customer balanced score cards analysis and last but not least just like Michael Porter said, the greatest sustainable strategy is to be unique and not to be the best, because only by being unique, one can be better all the time.
