The Marketing Mix of Burger King Company - Case Study Example

I. Table of Contents I. Table of Contents 1 II. Executive Summary 2 III. Body 3 A. Methodology 3 B. Results or findings 3 1. Vision, mission and objectives 3 2. Marketing mix 4 C. Analysis and Discussion 6 1. Consumer’s heart 6 2. Brand framework (hypothetical) 7 3. Strategic canvas (positioning map) 8 4. MPP application 10 D. Recommendation 14 IV. Appendices 15 Bibliography 22 II. Executive Summary This paper aims to explore the marketing mix of Burger King and create some recommendations in order for the company to make use of its marketing mix to its advantage. The marketing mix of the company is traced through research with the mostly secondary data, and some primary data in order to gather facts and provide for the analysis. However, due to limitations such as access to hard market data through formal quantitative and qualitative researches, the analysis may not be the most accurate representation of the market. This limits the analysis to most market data available from secondary sources. After the marketing mix has been determined, the applicability of the marketing planning process to the company’s operation is described. This will benefit the company in the strategic sense in order for it to either secure or push to a higher position. Finally, recommendations have been made in order to provide the company some options in order to facilitate growth by changing the combination of the elements in the marketing mix, and create a competitive advantage tailored to its chosen target market. III. Body A. Methodology The scope of this business report is to describe the marketing mix of the company Burger King from primary and secondary resources in order to make an accurate analysis for their marketing planning process. By knowing the current marketing mix of the company, recommendations can be provided in order to boost growth for the company by manipulating the marketing mix. This report is conducted by utilizing the available resources that could provide information about Burger King such as television advertisements, print advertisements, press releases, company annual report, and articles from major business periodicals. However, due to certain limitation such as access to primary data such as surveys, focus group discussions and observational research, the report does not reflect the most accurate representations of the market, especially for the multi-attribute assessment for comparison of the brands in the strategic canvas. B. Results or findings 1. Vision, mission and objectives a) Vision “We proudly serve the best burgers in the business, plus a variety of real, authentic foods…all freshly prepared…just the way you want it (Burger King, 2008).” b) Mission The company does not have a written mission statement. 2. Marketing mix a) Product Burger King offers the following for its menu: Whopper sandwiches, other fire-grilled burgers, lean and greens, chicken and fish, breakfast, treats, sides and beverages, kids meal. Burger King’s product line is mainly comprised by its signature burger which is made of authentic beef and ingredients. Over the years, the company has evolved and included healthier options and alternative to beef such as chicken and fish, as well as lean and green products such as salads. Recently, the company has also offered kids meals. b) Price Burger King positions itself at a premium over its largest competitor, McDonald’s by charging a higher price on its products. According to some customer reviews, other customers perceive Burger King as more expensive than its competitor McDonald’s (Ciao.co.uk, 2008). c) Place Burger King employs the distribution strategy that is most common for the fast food—the most frequented locations. Among its requirements include, as indicated in its “Optimal BURGER KING® site characteristics: 20,000 - 40,000 square feet; corner or corner wrap location; high traffic counts on two major streets; excellent visibility for signage and building; capacity for 1,900-4,000 square foot building; space for parking and drive-through that meets all applicable code (Bk.com, 2008).” d) Integrated marketing communication The company’s integrated marketing communication has been aggressive over the years, under their “Have it your own way” slogan. The company’s ads emphasize freedom of choice. As regards its flagship products—the hamburger under the Whopper brand name, the ads focus on the ‘authenticity’ of the product and its better taste (whoppervirgin.com, 2008). In a television ad entitled ‘Are you man enough?’ which was made to communicate to men, the product emphasizes the calories that the product has and linking it to manliness, as men are perceived to be more patronizing of more indulgent food as they burn it through their active lifestyles. The company relies on non-traditional media for its marketing communications such as the internet through viral marketing. The company has utilized sponsorship of some celebrities, events and scholarships, as well as product placement on movies. C. Analysis and Discussion 1. Consumer’s heart a) Target market The primary target market of Burger King, as apparent in its advertisements are young adults, especially males, age 18-34 (McCarthy 2005). The secondary target market of Burger King is a larger market for much younger people. This is reflected by the company’s sponsorship efforts such as the ‘Big brothers Big sisters project’, quiz bees, and celebrity tours (Bk.com, 2008) as well as some other promotional campaign such as the ‘chance to win a Wii’ project (Bk.com, 2008). b) Competition Burger King’s operates in the fast food industry, under the burger chains business. Its largest competitor is McDonald’s, with Wendy’s as its nearest competitor in terms of menu that are offered (Business Wire, 2008). The indirect competition includes other fast food chains such as the Yum! brands which include Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. Apart from these, Burger King is also in competition indirectly with other restaurants and food retail stores. c) Consumer’s Insight The main consumer insight which Burger King capitalizes on, as apparent in its vision statement is the ‘authenticity’ of its product—consumers’ desire for something real and better tasting. 2. Brand framework (hypothetical) a) Unique selling proposition The major unique selling proposition of Burger King is its “best burgers in the business, plus a variety of real, authentic foods…all freshly prepared…just the way you want it (burgerking.openface.ca, 2008).” b) Reason to believe The company has incorporated in its marketing campaign a major reason to believe by documenting taste test of its product over its McDonald’s counterpart Big Mac against the Whopper. By having people from parts of the world who had never tasted, seen or heard anything about hamburger, Burger King has made them taste and choose over the two burgers (whoppervirgin.com, 2008) and the majority of vote has shown that Burger King offers the better burger, at least over McDonald’s Big Mac. 3. Strategic canvas (positioning map) For purposes of hypothetical comparison in the absence of hard data with proven methodology that will reflect the accuracy of the situation in the market, we use MarketSurveys.com’s (a subsidiary of The Dohring Company, a leading market research firm) survey result dated January 14, 2009 in order to get a picture of how Burger King compares to its major competitors. According to figure 1 in the appendices, most people eat at McDonald’s, followed by a Wendy’s with a huge difference, and then Burger King behind. Figure 2 explores the question of which among the three have the best burgers. The result: Burger King has the best, followed shortly by Wendy’s, leaving McDonald’s burger far behind. Figure 3 asks about which among the three have the best fries, which leads to having McDonald’s leading so much far beyond Burger King, with Wendy’s shortly behind. Best service and facilities are the criteria for figure 4, where McDonald’s score the highest, followed by Wendy’s shortly, leaving Burger King very far behind. As for variety, Wendy’s lead the battle, followed by McDonald’s, and followed by Burger King as shown in figure 5. The best communications belong to McDonald’s, leaving Burger King and Wendy’s far behind as illustrated in figure 6. The figures show where Burger King excels, and where it is weak. The good points for Burger King is the taste of its burgers—that is where it excels as according to the survey. Its weaknesses lie in its facilities and customer service, variety and its communications campaigns. These could be areas to improve on. 4. MPP application a) Objectives Marketing planning process starts by employing strategic management in the company. Everything starts with the company’s vision and mission, where the company’s set of objectives for the long-term, medium-term and short-term would be drawn. It is very usual that the corporate-level objective of an organization can be the company value and the rate of return on shareholders’ investments. After such objective has been set, the objective is translated into targeted net income. Then, the functional-level objectives will need to be determined. This is where the objective-setting for the marketing function starts. The usual objective is capturing market share, acquiring then retaining those customers, which eventually translates into sales. Whether Burger King aims to challenge McDonald’s to eventually capture the lead position in the market or just increase its share in the local or global market--that could be the start of the objective development for the company. b) Strategies development After the objective has been developed, increasing its market share could be a more realistic objective for Burger King. The plan in order to fulfill this objective is the strategy. As regards strategic development, Burger King can craft its strategy based on the opportunities in the market. One way to spot these opportunities is by conducting an industry analysis, and looking at the neglected segments of the market. Where McDonald’s has not dominated yet, Burger King can choose to capture it in order to enlarge its customer base without having to incur costs from head-to-head fight with McDonald’s. Also, the company must be able to establish first its primary and secondary target market more clearly. It cannot be the burger for everybody. And it has to communicate that to the people which its product caters to best. By defining the demographics and psychographics of both its primary and secondary market, the company will have a better grasp of what they need which they can in turn provide. By knowing exactly what aspects influence a consumer to purchase in its company, it can focus on those aspects and incorporate them in the Burger King brand. Burger King also has to represent some emotional benefit as regards its brand—something clear the brand stands about apart from just great food, for example to match the target market’s need for a brand that it can relate to by making it a ‘friend’ to the target market by mirroring the target market’s values and personality. Given the weaknesses of Burger King as illustrated in the strategic canvas, the company can also choose to reposition itself--in such a way in order to address those weaknesses and improve them as they become included in the set of benefits the new position of the brand holds. c) Tactical planning Tactical planning includes the marketing mix formation for the company. This is very essential after Burger King has established a clear and strong brand framework. What the brand stands for will be reflected in the company’s combination of product lines; the image that it tries to portray is reflected by the pricing strategy as well as the look of the place or its stores. Another integral part in the marketing mix is the company’s marketing communications effort. All the company initiated brand messages will be communicated through this. After Burger King has come up with a marketing objective, the company can craft objectives for its marketing communications, such as percentage of customers to retain and percentage of customers to acquire, as how it will later be reflected in the advertisements, publicity stunts, sponsorships and other marketing communications function. d) Implementation Burger King will only be able to implement the desired strategies and tactics if it includes its employees and other stakeholders as part of its target audience to whom the message will be communicated. The company will need the cooperation of the employees to carry with them what the company stands for as regards the brand as they are reflected by their interaction with customers. Changing the marketing mix usually requires the strategic partnership with the human resource function of the company. Implementing new strategies include change management, which is vital in order for Burger King to make its employees adopt the new status quo. e) Control Because objectives are set by quantifying them, the company needs to track the performance of the company’s marketing efforts and see if the goal is being accomplished by the strategy that is employed. Marketing controls will make sure that people who are given the authority and responsibility over certain tasks that is required in order to fulfill the company objective will be tracked for the company to either reward them for their good job or continue to motivate them, or make them responsible for some shortcomings. f) Justification Justification will be important for Burger King in order to make accurate decisions over its investment decisions. The marketing plan will not be the only investment decision the company needs to make, and in order to convince other people that the project is worthwhile, and it will contribute to the company’s long-term objectives, justification is important. D. Recommendation First of all, Burger King must check its strategy first if it is supportive of its objectives before it can decide to change the marketing mix. As apparent in the failure of its ad campaigns during the previous years, the company’s failure to establish a clear brand framework to communicate to its target market is traced by its less strategic approach to marketing. But for the current, the company can manipulate the marketing mix as regards its current positioning. The easiest way to do it is to enhance its marketing communications effort more than any other element. It would be more costly to change the product line and add new stuff which its target market will want, even the places and the pricing. It can deal with the current status quo, provided it can link the brand Burger King to the needs of the target market—by providing some functional, emotional or process benefit in response for it. Since there is no hard market research data where the sound solid recommendation can be based, no specific action can be recommended as to enhance its marketing communications effort. Just one thing, it can make its efforts integrated by making all the brand messages that the company sends whether through the internet, television ad, or press releases under one major brand message, which the brand is about. If it is “Have your own way,” as it has been its slogan for years, then all the other brand messages will revolve around there, which will make the message stickier for customers to remember and relate to the Burger King brand. IV. Appendices Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Bibliography Video: Burger King 2008. Whopper Virgins [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Video: Burger King 2008. I’m A Man [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Brand barometer - Burger King ad gets people talking (21 November 2006. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/605745/?DCMP=ILC-BETASEARCH> Burger King. Burger King Corp. Partners with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Miami. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Burger King (15 May 2008). Burger King Corp. to Sponsor the Jonas Brothers Summer Tour. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Burger King (10 November 2008). Burger King Corp. Gives Holiday Shoppers a Chance to Win a Wii(TM) System with the Purchase of a BK(R) Crown Card. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Burger King (2008). Our Vision. Burger King [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Burger King (12 January 2009). Have it Your Way® Foundation Sponsors the Miami Herald Spelling Bee. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Burger King. HAVE IT YOUR WAY(R) Foundation Raises Funds to Support Scholarships. Burger King News [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Duncan, T. (2005), Principles of Advertising & IMC. 2nd ed. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill. McCarthy, Michael (23 May 2005). Burger King tries old slogan again. USA Today [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: McDonald’s vs. Burger King vs. Wendy’s. Market Surveys.com [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: Zacks Analyst Interview Highlights: Yum! Brands, McDonald's and Burger King (26 August 2008). Thomson Reuters [online]. [Accessed 14 January 2009]. Available from World Wide Web: ROBBINS, S. 2005. Organizational Behavior. Philippines: McGraw-Hill Read More