Process Centred Management: McDonalds in the UK - Assignment Example

Process Centred Management With ‘Place’ as a given, how does McDonald’s in the UK address the other three Ps in the Marketing mix? When organizations have enough opportunities in various markets, it can set targets and formulate various strategies particularly marketing strategies to achieve those targets. Marketing strategies are the crucial component because they will only entice the customers and bring them into the store, or make them buy their products, or utilize their services. This is applicable to the service organization of McDonald’s as well. So, in this part of the paper, McDonald’s marketing strategy while running its store in the small English town of Eastborough will be discussed using the tool of Marketing Mix. Among the 4 Ps (Place, Product, Pricing and Promotion), having a good range of Products will surely help organizations to entice more customers, as it will give choices to them to choose their favourite or likeable product. Customers will abhor any places, where there are only limited choices. So, the decision of McDonald’s to expand its food menu at the Eastborough is a welcome step. McDonald’s has steadily expanded the range of food and drinks. Apart the original offering of burgers, drinks and fries, it had also included breakfast, sandwiches and salads. It gives the customer more foods and drinks to choose from and also the choice to go for healthier food among the available options. The other product based marketing strategy adopted by McDonald’s is the introduction of packaged meals. That is, in addition to being sold as individual items, many of the products are packaged into special offers with a higher price tag. For example, the Big Mac Meal consists of a Big Mac, a drink and a portion of fries. As customer normally prefer ‘all in one meals’, they tend to favour these packaged meals. When it comes to the Third P of Pricing, McDonald’s are taking important measures not to inflate the prices. While fixing the price, the marketing department at McDonald’s first analyzes the total cost of the product offered. Then, they had to consider the prices charged by the rival competitors and importantly what the costumers will be able to pay. As McDonald’s was able to follow this effective guidlines, its prices do not appear to be expensive to the customers. This is the comment of a customer, “It’s not too expensive and the children like the food” (Case study). While carrying out the promotional activities as part of marketing, McDonald’s consider the children as their main target group. To bring in children, McDonald’s complimentarily gives a line of toys, a line of clothes, a line of videos, all directed at young kids." (Spurlock, 2005). Also, Children’s parties for special occasions, such as birthdays, are regularly catered for and special events like face painting are frequently organized as part of promotional activities. To entice the parents as well, McDonald’s conducted parent’s centric activities as well. For example, “on the previous Mother’s Day, daffodils were available for children to give to their mother.” (Case study). So, McDonald’s carry out promotional activities, to bring in, the whole family. 2. Provide two examples from the case that exemplify McDonald’s approach to managing quality. When organizations produce products or offers services, they have to incorporate quality in it. Only if, organizations achieve excellence in quality, it can reach the ‘minds’ of the customers, entice them and eventually ‘push’ them to buy the organization’s products or use their services. “Quality is ensuring everything we do has the customer in mind... Quality is about building reputation, performance and an attitude of winning in everything we do.” (Zafirovski). In the case of McDonald’s, the quality aspect is incorporated both in its food preparation as well as in its physical environment. McDonald’s was able to incorporate quality in its food preparation mainly by introducing a new delivery system titled, ‘Made for You’. That is, when its competitors Burger King and Wendy’s were able to offer hotter and tastier food than McDonald’s, it decided to optimize quality of its own products through a new plan. Originally launched in 1998, the basis of this plan is to do away with those precooked slabs of meat, and instead prepare sandwiches with freshly prepared meat, with freshly toasted buns to heighten the taste. In order to make this happen and thereby improve quality, each store installed an array of equipment including Pentium III computers to coordinate the orders, ‘rapid toasters’, and temperature controlled ‘launching zones’ to replace the old heat lamps and holding bins. (Case study). With this plan, McDonald’s was able to prepare and serve quality food and the customers appreciated this initiative. “I ordered a Double Cheeseburger Deluxe… and I swear the bread was fresh, beef patties perfectly cooked, cheese soft and perfectly melted and the lettuce very crisp… So, no more soggy fries, hard bread and cold hamburger patties. Hurrah for McDonalds for being the FIRST to do it!” (foodatbp.multiply.com, 2008). Because of these favourable responses, the McDonald’s management was quite happy with the outcome of the plan. So, with the effective implementation of ‘made for you’ plan, McDonald’s was indeed able to optimize the quality of its products. “McDonald’s claims that the quality of its products has indeed improved” (Case study). Even though, quality of the food is an important criterion to entice the customers, keeping the physical environment clean and hygienic is also an important criterion. That is, only if the McDonald’s stores are kept clean, the customers will visit it and consume food, without inhibitions. Keeping this aspect in mind, the McDonald’s management took steps to improve the cleanliness of the restaurant, especially the eating area and thereby made the place attractive and enticing. For example, at the Eastborough restaurant, during quiet periods, sections of seating are closed off for cleaning. This was carried out quite often with the dining area’s host or hostess only responsible to clean the places and thereby improve quality. “The seating area is patrolled by dining area hosts/ hostesses, whose primary role is to keep the area clean and tidy” (Case study). So, McDonald’s through these two approaches was able to manage and optimize quality. 3. McDonald’s original strength (in the US) was its operational processes which delivered speedy service and a consistent customer experience. To what extent is this focus on operational process still important to the McDonald’s business, and to what extent, in the UK, has a marketing focus on the customer changed the emphasis of the business? Discuss with reference to the case. The products which are manufactured for humans’ use, will ‘reach’ them physically and also their mind, only if the organization has an efficient operational process with a speedy delivery service and consistent customer relations. Before the product ‘reaches’ the customer, it has to a pass through a ‘maze’ of places, and it is up to the organization to correct that ‘maze’ and pave the product to its eventual destination. In the case of McDonald’s, it had an efficient operational process at its US restaurants, but its attempts to replicate that same efficiency at its UK restaurants, especially at Eastborough, met with mixed responses. That is, even though McDonald’s optimized its operational process at its UK restaurants through various ways, it fell short in certain aspects. The ‘speedy’ part of McDonald’s operational process was incorporated way back in 1940’s itself, because its founders, Richard and Maurice McDonald followed the philosophy: “Everything prepared in advance, everything uniform. All geared to heavy volume in a short amount of time” (Case study). Along with this philosophy, McDonald’s “aims not to exceed a maximum time for the customer waiting in line of two minutes and a maximum waiting time of one minute from the order being placed” (Case study). To follow the above philosophy and importantly to achieve the above mentioned aims, McDonald’s have undertaken various steps to accentuate the speed of its operational process. That is, if a food item is not available in the production area, the counter person calls the order to the production person who calls the food order to the grill area, with that food item prepared as a top priority. This way, McDonald’s was able to provide even the not so popular or not fast moving food items quickly. In the Eastborough restaurant, Filet-O-Fish, Vegetable Deluxe, Chicken Caesar salad, chicken ranch salad and Garden side salad all fall into this category. And when they are cooked to order, the McDonald’s staffs make it sure that they are cooked quickly. Even while they are being cooked, the staffs are asked to request the customer to take a seat. “This might apply to an elderly customer or a parent struggling with several children” (Case study). The other step that is taken by McDonald’s to increase the speed of the operational process and thereby strengthen customer relations is by doing a proper production planning. That is, the schedule manager, who can be either the restaurant or the first assistant manager, prepares a daily chart of projected sales by hour throughout the day. Along with that data, the previous three weeks’ sales and the sales for the same period last year are also used to judge the visiting and the buying pattern of the customers. Based on the visiting and the buying pattern of the customer, McDonald’s can plan its production. In the periods of high demand (guessed from the analysis of the visiting and buying pattern), a person will be assigned to “the bin”. There, the task involves managing the flow of products, calling for production as needed and thus making the ordered food available to the customer in a quick manner. Even while making the food available to the customer in a quick manner by storing the prepared food at the bin, care is taken not to provide a non-hot, damp food. So, to “guarantee that the customers were only served with hot and fresh products, food was held for no longer than 10 minutes after wrapping before being either sold or discarded” (Case study). Thus, even while maintaining a speedy service, McDonald’s have incorporated quality and thereby is building optimal customer relations. But, sometimes these two important aspects, speedy service and quality will not go hand in hand and this is clearly visible in the UK operations of McDonald’s. That is, to improve quality, McDonald’s had introduced ‘Made for You’ plan, but that plan instead delayed the operational processes. Under the scheme, the food is cooked after it has been ordered, with the customer standing and waiting. So, the problem is, the waiting times in the restaurants have doubled to an average of 2–3 minutes per order… and even 15-minute waits are not unusual” (Case study). “In effect, McDonalds traded speed for quality” (Alexander, 2003). So, even though, the quality is improved, the speed of the operational process is compromised. With this analysis, it clear that the operational processes have to be improved in the case of UK operations. References Alexander, Dilroy, 2003, McDonalds focus flips back to fast, Retrieved August 6, 2008, from http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/course/opns430/modules/process_analysis/Readings_ProcAnal/McDonald_2003.doc Case study, written by written by Terry Hill (University of Oxford) Alex Hill (University of Kingston) and R. Lily., McDonald’s Corporation. AMD Publishing foodatbp.multiply.com, 2008, McDonald’s Made for You, Retrieved August 6, 2008, from http://foodatbp.multiply.com/journal/item/17 Spurlock, M, 2005, The Truth about McDonalds and Children, Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0522-20.htm Zafirovski, M, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Retrieved August 8, 2008, from http://www.nortel.com/corporate/programs/gcvm/index.html Read More