Franchise

Melanie Soton

Anastasia Kochmaruk

Ignacio Cueto Auza

1) What made the corporation shift so radically from its global, Americanised one to a glocal approach ?

«Think Global, Act local»

McDonald’s main aim was to make a set of items which will be standardized in all countries around the world. The taste as well as the appearance of the product needed to be the same. The company is well applied this strategy trying at the same time TO BE adaptable to different markets due to certain environmental conditions.

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Adaptation is required for many reasons including consumer tastes/preferences, laws and customs.

For example, McDonald’s proposes vegetable food in several countries like India or you can not find Big Macs with cheese in Israel or there is no burgers with pork in Muslim countries.

Moreover, the company adapts products on the menu level to meet customers’ needs all over the world.  The structure of the menu remains the same: main course, fries and a drink but it’s possible to buy beer with your menu in Germany, yogurt drinks in Turkey, espresso and cold pasta in Italy.

This is a perfect example of McDonald’s sensitivity to other cultures and a way in which it integrated itself, as a brand, into those special markets. And this has ensured success.

We should not forget about the promotional level. McDonald’s conveys one overall image with different personalities in different cultures. They concentrate on standardizing the brand name but localizing advertising campaigns.  For example, in East Asia, McDonald’s advertisements are geared toward children, to whom it credits much of its success in that region.

Adaptation

So, today McDonald’s is going glocal. They continue to expand into international markets adopting this approach. This can be explained in utilizing the Boston Consultancy Group matrix.

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The Boston consultancy group marketWHAT ?

2) What, in particular, drove them to «green up» their image?

McDonald’s started to change his image from red to green in the year 2007, but it was first implemented in France and then in Germany in 2009. This was made to satisfy and attracted more customers and make grow up hisGET ITS  market share TO GROW in the European market. Before this the company was perceived as a franchise that served unhealthy food with no fresh ingredients.

At first McDonalds has redesign their restaurants in order to implement natural recycled materials like wood or even stone. Also They started to recycle the oil used to cook French fries to reconvert it into biodiesel fuel for their vans.

The menus were also changed adding sustainably grown coffee, organic milk

and toasted deli sandwiches. And even green peace has worked with McDonald’s on making sure the soya that comes from Brazil is not damaging the forest where it comes from.

And we can not forget the Bové incident that happened in France in the 90’s were french farmers made some protests in order to avoid American agricultural preference products and that after led McDonald’s to use local european agricultural products and to use French fresh products.

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