Application of the Hierarchy of Effects Model on McDonald's Brand Products and Services - Case Study Example

Application of the hierarchy of effects model on McDonald’s brand products and services Name Institution Date Application of the hierarchy of effects model on McDonald’s brand products and services Introduction Advertisement is an imperative marketing strategy for any brand or business of a company. It is therefore extremely important for companies to choose the best advertisement approach that perfectly fits the uniqueness of the brand and business (Stahl et al, 2012). For many years, marketing and advertising practitioners and researchers across the world have diligently sought to understand how an advertisement can influence the purchase decision of a buyer. On the same note, the effectiveness of measures and strategies developed in the contemporary multi-billion dollar industry is relatively at stake. For this reason, at the core of contemporary understanding is the concept of hierarchy of effects. The concept deals with how target audiences first process and then make use of advertising information ultimately to influence brand and product choices. The theory was propagated by Robert Lavidge and Gary Steiner in 1961 for the sake of measuring the effectiveness of advertising. To build knowledge and awareness of a given product or brand is mainly related to the dimension of cognitive behavior. This essay explicitly discusses the hierarchy of effects model by applying the concept to global brand called McDonalds (Asadollahi, 2011). Overview of the brand McDonalds is one of the largest global fast food and hamburger restaurant chain with a variety of products. The company maintains an advertising campaign that is extensive (Bruce et al, 2012). The company makes use of the signage and billboards in addition to newspaper ads, radio and television. Further, it also sponsors sporting events that range from small Leagues to Olympic Games and Fifa World Cup. Another way of sponsoring the company uses is by making orange juice coolers with their logo for the local events of every kind. Television nevertheless has remained the core form of advertising for the company. Having a wide spectrum of customers and services to offer depending on the customers’ demands, the brand has put much priority to its customers’ interest. That way, the brand practices many advertisement model and theories to impress their consumers. Among them, the restaurant considers the promotional mix approach and the Hierarchy of effects model (Stahl et al, 2012). According to Halevy et al (2011), with the promotional mix approach, there are five ways in which the company markets and promotes its products. They include personal selling, direct marketing, advertisement and public relations. McDonalds upholds the integration of the five core communication methods and considers them crucial to the overall perception and image of its brand and services. To ensure this, the management of the company puts its much of its focus on the interests of the customers. McDonalds has embraced the promotional mix in a consistent and relevant manner with the best message quality at the same time (Halevy et al, 2011). McDonalds and hierarchy of effects Halevy et al, (2011) purports that hierarchy of effects encourages advertiser to make advertisements in a manner that the customer is taken through six fundamental stages namely purchase, conviction, preference, liking, knowledge and awareness. At that level, slogans, skywriting, jingles or similar attention capturing strategies are required to cut through the clutter of advertisement and at the same time build the awareness of a given brand or product. So as to convert consumer to have purchase intention and conviction for your brand strategies that incorporate point-of-purchase advertising. When one looks into the advertisements of McDonalds, it is evident that the hierarchy of effects is in play. For instance the company makes posters that are persuasive to the targeted markets. A brief poster is enough to indicate how different and unique a brand is (Halevy et al, 2011). The figure below for instance is purposefully meant to attract the potential customers by indicating to them that indeed the McDonalds Hamburgers are indeed the best and the tastiest in the world. Figure 1: How McDonalds uses adverts to attract customers Source: (McDonalds, 2010). In addition to that, the famous letter ‘M’ in the products of McDonalds is a way of recognizing the brand. With that approach, it is uncommon to confuse the brand with any other hamburger and fast food restaurants. With this, the brand has fully taken charge and influenced people to buy its products. The figure below demonstrates how the famous ‘M’ is the brands main way of recognition. With this the brand is definitely using the hierarchy of effects model to create competitive advantage in the industry. Figure 2: McDonalds uses the letter ‘M’ to recognize its brand Source: (McDonald et al, 2011) This very model however, McDonalds in a position to take advantage of the already existing feeling of the consumers about the brand and capitalize on it by creating more advertisement that is built on the feeling (McDonald et al, 2011). This way, the customer will have gone through a feel-learn-do sequence which is also a version of the hierarchy of effects approach. A consumer will first get the positive feeling about the product (for instance a burger or soft juice), then the customer learns about it and finally purchase it. A customer gets the positive feeling in most cases by the appearance of the product. For example, the McDonalds Company is normally located in places where there are many people like in major towns and airports for instance. The company has display screens that advertise their products to pointing out how attractive the products are; this way, the company fulfills an integral component of the hierarchy called the creation of desire (McDonald, 2010). When the desire is created, the feeling to purchase the products will also be ready. Before purchasing, a brand from McDonalds especially for the first time, a customer will want to learn more about the particular product that he or she feels good about. As a result, the customer might go over the counter to inquire about a specific brand in terms of maybe taste and cost. When the customer is satisfied with feedback he or she goes ahead and purchases the product. This way, the customer will have gone through key steps in the hierarchy of effects approach namely the feel, learn and buy as demonstrated in the figure below: Figure 3: The cycle experienced by a prospective customer before purchasing a product Source: (Purnawirawan et al, 2012). As suggested by Lavidge and Steiner (1961) a consumer will most probably go through stages that are all geared towards moving from the initial awareness of product and eventually the action taken by the customer. A consumer will respond in terms of the hierarchical effects (Purnawirawan et al, 2012). These are basically the series of stages of cycle a prospective buyer experiences. The figure below demonstrates the fundamental stages: Figure 4: The key stages of the Hierarchy of effects Model Source: (Purnawirawan et al, 2012). McDonalds can therefore go through these fundamental stages with it deferent brands depending on the type advertisement it decides to adopt. The first step is the most important because it will determine how much the other stages will work (McDonald et al, 2011). It is the sole responsibility of the company to create awareness for its products and brands. After all, this is the main marketing strategy done by many companies. For this reason McDonalds needs to be more efficient and effective in creation of awareness. This way, all the other process works more easily because the attention of a prospective buyer is normally already captured. From the slogans, skywriting, jingles among others approaches; the customer embraces new knowledge about the brand for instance burgers and soft drinks including the kind of service that comes along. The knowledge will eventually help the customer to develop a liking or an interest on the product that impresses them. The liking can also be considered the development of interest. The development of interest might take depending on the prospective consumers. There are consumers who are easy to convince while others who are full of skepticism are not easy to convince. It might take time but eventually, all the prospective customers need confidence in the brand before consuming it (McDonald et al, 2011). According to McDonald (2010), McDonald has done well with awareness creation so far. It has exploited every possible option to ensure new and prospective customers are encouraged to purchase the products. The rest of stages like preference and evaluation for instance are stages where the company might not really do much but rather, determined by the consumers. The customer has the option of evaluating the options and the brands within McDonalds for instance and decides which product they will consume. A customer might be a vegetarian for instance and is therefore likely to prefer chicken burgers or vegetable burgers; a different customer might however prefer beef burgers. After that, the customer will make a decision of whether to give it a shot or not. This is normally the second last stage of the theory of the hierarchy of effects before the prospective consumer now makes the actual purchase of the product. McDonalds definitely experiences these stages or a part of them when selling its products and different brands that range from soft drinks to the different varieties of burgers (McDonald et al, 2011). For multi-billion companies like McDonalds, marketing is a core component that cannot be over looked. Approaches like the hierarch of effects marketing model is consider an integrated marketing communication (IMC). For an IMC, marketing is basically the process of planning and executing the promotion, distribution, pricing and conceptualization of services, goods and ideas to create exchanges that bring satisfaction of the objectives of individuals and organizations. The approach appreciates that marketing has value co-creation, social impact, exchange and relationships (Purnawirawan et al, 2012). Conclusion Summarily, companies cannot do away with marketing of their brands if they want to be competitive in their respective industries. A brand like McDonalds has demonstrated that advertisement is so essential in selling its products to the consumers. The hierarchy of effects is an outstanding model for demonstrating the stages of advertisement because it indicates the fundamental stages a prospective customer goes through between the stage of awareness to the actual purchase of the product. McDonalds has tried to demonstrate the stages of advertisements but it still needs to do more to remain competitive and fruitful. References Asadollahi, A. (2011). Investigation the relationship between low involvement products and high involvement products with advertisement strategies. Contemporary Marketing Review, 1(5), 1-4. Bruce, N. I., Peters, K., & Naik, P. A. (2012). Discovering how advertising grows sales and builds brands. Journal of marketing Research, 49(6), 793-806. Halevy, N., Y. Chou, E., & D. Galinsky, A. (2011). 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