Service Marketing Mix in McDonalds - Essay Example

?Marketing Contents Contents 2 Service Marketing Mix in McDonald’s 4 Product 4 Place 4 Price 4 Promotion 5 People 5 Process 5 Physical Evidence 5 Service Marketing Strategies in dealing with Consumer Behaviour 6 Service Marketing Strategies for Service Recovery 7 Service Marketing Strategies for Enhancing Business Competencies 9 Service Marketing Strategies based on to reduce Gaps 11 Service Strategies and Managing People for Service Advantage 11 References 13 Service Marketing Mix in McDonald’s Analysis of the service marketing mix of McDonald’s, a world renowned fast food restaurant, would not only entail study of the first four marketing mixes relating to product, price, place and promotion but would also tend to focus on other marketing mixes on its process of operations, the internal people and physical evidences from the consumer’s viewpoint. Product McDonald’s continuously endeavours to standardise the set of products manufactured with a view to suit the local custom of a particular region. Thus, the fast food restaurant is found to abstain from beef and use mutton while producing and selling non-vegetarian products like hamburgers in India. Such working on continuous innovation helps the company fit into the tastes and likings of the consumers of different regions. Place In terms of location, the fast food restaurant focuses on enhancing its market share pertaining to a particular region through the opening up of large number of outlets in different parts. Thus it has been able to open up numerous restaurants around the globe which in turn help the company to gain on its profits and market revenues. Price In regards to the price mix it is found that McDonald’s works continuously in revising its pricing strategies based on the social, competitive and business environment of a particular region. The company endeavours to understand the demand of products in the region, availability of resources, competitor’s actions and other such parameters before setting the price of its produces. Promotion In the area of promotion, the fast food company works on a number of venues pertaining to advertisement, advancing relations with the public, taking part in promotion of events and enhancing its relationship and liaison with different communities. The company, in relation to advertisement activities, works in engaging celebrities to enhance its brand image through visual and print advertisements. Similarly, the company invests largely in active sponsorships of different sporting events ranging from Olympics to other international sporting agendas. People In regards to employing people, the company largely focuses on gaining the advantage of skilled labour sets from the local communities while closely following the legislations pertaining to employability of people in the region. Further, the company also works in developing the skill sets of the employees to fit to local tastes by working on the development of adequate training programs. Process Though McDonald’s works on a global plane in meeting the fast food requirements of people belonging to different regions, yet it renders the main focus on meeting the aspirations of the local consumers. Thus, the organisation has worked in developing standardised rules that would help the company largely control the actions of the suppliers and other such stakeholders in meeting the quality needs of the local people. Physical Evidence The fast food restaurant working on an international plane closely focuses on providing a clean space wherein the customers can relish and enjoy the ready-to-eat products by sitting with their friends and families. Moreover, the company works towards providing the customers a large variety of food products that are produced in a quick fashion while focusing to sustain the quality of the produces as well (Vignali, 2001, p.99-110). This discussion thus reflects on the aspects that how McDonald’s works on gaining the advantage of aligning the seven service marketing mixes to help enhance on the parameters of consumer and employee satisfaction thereby augmenting the revenue and sales paradigms. The paper however, focuses on devising five potential service strategies that would help the company in gaining access to enhanced market shares and revenues. Service Marketing Strategies in dealing with Consumer Behaviour Consumers visiting the fast food joints like that of McDonald’s not only render focus on getting the best quality food products in terms of taste and contents but also have an eye on the nature of service deliveries. Thus, McDonald’s in its attempt to enhance consumer loyalty should not only focus on developing its product and price mixes but also on closing the gap in the consumer’s mind arising from the existence of intangibility of service offered. The restaurant managers must closely focus on translating the intangible objectives of the service delivered in the restaurants to tangible objectives by engaging the consumers to the business process. The consumers therein are required to feel the outcome of the service offered in terms of faster and effective product deliveries. To enhance the tangibility aspect, the restaurant managers are also required to provide the consumers with different brochures that would provide pictures and prices of the food varieties. Such aspects would help in engaging the mindset of the consumer to the nature of services offered in the restaurant. Moreover, the service provider in restaurants like McDonald’s is also required to match the expectations of service quality of the consumers by effectively assessing the needs through gaining of feedbacks. These feedbacks would serve as potential suggestions for the betterment of the service patterns of the restaurants in regards to the needs and aspirations of the local and regional people. This service strategy would thereby help the restaurant firm in reducing the emergence and impact of losses from its food business. Communication enhanced through such pattern would help in the betterment of relationship with the consumers that would in turn enhance the paradigm of trust and customer loyalty (Bebko, 2000, p.19-20; Flint, Woodruff and Gardial, 1997, p.171-172)). Service Marketing Strategies for Service Recovery The service marketing strategies should also focus on enhancing the recovery mechanism through which the return on the investments made in service marketing activities can be measured. Investments in the service marketing activities by a service company is conducted to help in the augmentation of customer loyalty that in turn helps in enhancing the revenue and sales parameters of the business. The service firm needs to enhance the service recovery mechanisms in order to help the customers feel greatly satisfied with the level of the firm’s performance. Thus the service company needs to adequately train and enhance the skill sets of the frontline employees so as to help in the meeting of expectations of the consumer in regards to the service delivery process (Richard, Coltman and Keating, 2012; Bolton, Grewal and Levy, 2007, p.3). Customers pertaining to different regions of the world are found to reflect different levels of perceptions of the service recovery process. Thus the service marketer is needed to effectively gauge the needs and aspirations of the customers and design the service delivery process accordingly. This makes the customers satisfied and in turn enhances the consumer loyalty to the firm. Thus McDonald’s need also to make the front line people get equally empowered to take some decisions on their own so as to make the customers feel satisfied. The service recovery mechanisms can be further enhanced through the rendering of effective atmospherics that includes sound, colour and aroma which in turn helps in exciting customer interest when entering the store or outlet. This strategy thus helps in augmenting the frequency of visits of the customer to the store to avail the service provided. Enhancement of the satisfaction levels of the customers in turn help in the augmenting of sales and revenue for the firm and thereby enhances the level of return on the investment made on promotion and marketing activities (Goldstein, 2002, et al, p.128-130; McDonald and Chemetony, n.d., p.12). The above discussion can be reflected through the help of the following diagram. Figure 1 (Goldstein, 2002, et al, p.130) Service Marketing Strategies for Enhancing Business Competencies The design of strategies for service marketing also encompasses an important aspect that focuses on augmenting the competitive position of the business in the international scenario. In regards to such aspect the new policies of the service corporation needs to be analysed where the service company aims at gaining hold of international markets to augment both its market share and potential sales and marketing revenues. Thus effective marketing through internet strategies needs to be developed that in turn needs to encompass the following points. Service marketing companies needs to create effective web pages to render salient information to the customers which the latter obtain on visiting the outlets. The web pages need to be adequately developed to help the customers get a three dimensional feel of the outlets with also online brochures being rendered to get a feel of the products and services rendered. Similarly the company needs to effectively train the front line team to deal with the internet queries so that they can get empowered to satisfy consumer’s needs. Moreover enhancing on service marketing front through the use of internet as a viable medium also requires the company to analyse the potential legislative regulations administering such. Presentation schemes must be given due importance in this regard for it excites the interest of the consumer to gain frequent visits to the internet site and thus helps the company to largely publicise its activities (Angehrn, 1997, p.365-367; Wind, Douglas, and Perlumutter, 1973, p.22-23). McDonald’s in this regard can work in expanding its website presence in helping the customers book their seats in a particular outlet for a particular day and time period to enjoy the store atmosphere. This activity in turn would help in enhancing the consumer visits to the website and to the stores eventually. Again such activity would also help in enhancing the relationship of the firm with the consumers owing to development of effective communication. The above discussion can also be presented in the form of a diagram as follows. Figure 2 (Source: Angehrn, 1997, p.367) Service Marketing Strategies based on to reduce Gaps The service marketing strategies needs to be developed and designed with a focus to reduce the different gaps and thereby to enhance the dimension of service quality. In the first case the service organisation is required to effectively gauge the needs and aspirations of the external customers. In that the service strategies needs to be developed based on adequate market research and thus should not be arbitrary in nature. In the second case the service marketing strategies needs to be developed to help in the effective allocation of resources that in turn enhances the quality of service and products. Again the effectiveness of the service marketing strategies can be further developed through standardisation of the aims and objectives. This fact would help the service organisation in governing the emergence of external constraints emanating in the extended market. Effective service marketing strategies can be developed through not only empowerment of the different employees to take active decisions but in also motivating them through proper training mechanisms. More so training the employees to work on new technological processes helps in enhancing the quality of the service delivered. Finally the service organisation is required to organise the skills of the employees with the marketing and promotional objectives so as to provide the right quality and blend of service to the customers as promised (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985, p.44-46; Rust, Lemon and Zeithaml, 2004, p.112). Service Strategies and Managing People for Service Advantage The service marketing strategies must be developed while rendering a potential focus on the development of organisational people. Development of the standards of the internal people helps them gain satisfaction through which they tend to work for enhancing the brand image of the concern. The organisation also through the effective sustaining of labour resources can largely invest in other marketing and promotional activities to help fetch sales and marketing revenue for the concern. Thus attrition levels being low the organisation would both gain on the returns made on the marketing and promotional investments and also on the development of an effective labour force with low switching costs. Thus for effective service marketing strategies the human resources and marketing goals and objectives must be closely integrated to help the organisation gain a competitive position in the service industry (Lovelock and Wirtz, 2010, p.307; Bharadwaj, Varadarajan, and Fahy, 1993, p.83-84). Thus, the management team at McDonald’s is required to reduce the hierarchy level in the organisation so as to work more closely with the front-line people. Working closely with the front-line people with also rendering proper salaries and incentives would help in highly motivating the people to work for rendering the best possible service to the customers. This in turn would help in to reduce the gap and make the concern gain on customer loyalty. Thus investments made by McDonald are in regards to advertisement and promotions can gain high amount of effective returns. References Lovelock, C., and Wirtz, J. (2010). Services Marketing. [Pdf]. Available At: http://bschool.nus.edu/Departments/Marketing/Jochen%20papers/sm7_cover_table%20of%20contents_samplechaptersandcase_2010_lgt.pdf. [Accessed on March 5, 2012]. Bharadwaj, S., Varadarajan, P., and Fahy, J. (1993). Sustainable competitive advantage in service industries: A Conceptual Model and Research Propositions. Journal of Marketing. Volume 57, Issue 4. [Pdf]. Available At: http://www.iseg.utl.pt/aula/cad1859/sust_comp_adv_serv_ind.pdf. [Accessed on March 5, 2012]. 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