Rhetorical Analysis on the Marketing Techniques used by McDonalds.
Who has never been to McDonalds? The famous fast food that almost everybody likes. Who has never heard about one of the most famous hamburger’s in the world, the Big Mac? With their big advertisements we see every day all around us, even while we are watching TV any advertisement can appear of any product a company wants to commercialize. Today, McDonalds is one of the biggest franchise, they expand their restaurants internationally in more than 100 countries. Richard and Maurice McDonald, the two creators of McDonalds decided to open the first “hamburger stand” in 1940. I don’t think that their main purpose was to create one of the most known chains. But what is even more fascinating is the way they have become such a big company in almost 80 years. Any big company tries to persuade the consumers to buy from them, and they would do anything possible for people to get interested in their product, but how did McDonalds get noticed over all their competitors? What did they do different to be the number one? TV shows, commercials, big billboards or even small ones around town. Many rhetorical devices were used and they did a really good job catching the attention of any kind of population, such as kids, teenagers or adults.
It is actually not something many people might know about McDonalds but the first thing that really made them be different from the others. The creation of the “Happy Meal”, a meal for little kids that includes a little toy for them to play and be happy after eating. That little toy would change every week or every day, so the customer would want to go every week to get the new toy. It mainly was made for children but it is accessible for all. Making the customer happy is what makes the companies be successful or not. If a customer doesn’t like the way they are treated or don’t seem to be interested in what they see, they will try to find a better place to go where they know they’ll find what they want. It was a very good innovation, that not many companies thought about and McDonalds deserve a lot of credit for that, in the world of marketing, if you find an idea that others don’t, you will have more customers interested in trying your new products.
Another marketing strategy they used is the marketing mix which includes product, place, price and promotion mix. The product is what the customers are going to buy, the image they have of it has to be perfect and has to be desired by the others. The most important part of the product is to give the customer a choice. Every customer has different tastes and needs, and some might like more chicken hamburger and others meat hamburgers. Some might even like salads and that is why McDonalds has such a large menu with so many options. Also tastes change, and competitors innovate new types of meals, to be able to keep up with that, they need to update once in a while their menu with new hamburgers in function of the customers tastes and try to get rid of any other hamburger that maybe didn’t work as expected.
Price is also a big marketing strategy that they always have to be aware of. People have different perceptions of money. Some people maybe think that McDonalds can be too expensive and others might think that it is cheap for what they offer. They use the prices of their competitors and try to offer to the customers the best deals and the biggest variety. It is also a psychological theme, where they have to play with it so everything looks more affordable.
After price and product, the third “P” is the place. In general people will not think about the location of the restaurant as something really important, but as a strategy of marketing it is important. They study every location, to see if they have any other competitor close to them, so they are never alone. Anywhere you go, seeing a McDonalds without a competitor like Burger King close to it mostly in Europe is very rare. Most restaurants like fast foods are located in areas where the living price isn’t very high. They try to build restaurants in those areas because they know it is quite cheap and affordable for people that aren’t able to afford much more. Many people work during the whole day and have kids, so having a place to buy food at almost any time and fast is what they look for. New things that they are starting is the food delivery. People that maybe can’t get to a restaurant just order the food from their house and get it delivered.
The last subject of the Marketing Mix is the promotion mix, the most important out of the 4 elements. The promotion mix is mainly the fact of communicating with the customers. There are so many ways to communicate between a company and the customers. To me the easiest way is big billboards around any town or city. A billboard that catches the attention of anyone is most likely to affect the customer in a positive way. It is mostly psychological and studies are made to be able to improve every time. It depends on the colors, the way the objects are positioned on the billboard and the size of the items. A great way too is the television. The commercials on TV are a great way to familiarize the people with their products. When a new product is about to come out, people usually know about it through the commercials and then just talk between each other. Almost everyone watches TV. The newest strategy is the McDonalds applications on cell phones. It is a big improvement for the company and makes everything easier for the customer. They are able to look at the menu from home and able to pick what they are going to eat and as it is said before, they can order from home and get the food delivered.
To conclude, McDonalds is today the world’s leading food service company in front of many others such as Burger King, Subway, Wendy’s or Taco Bell. Every fast food chain is working hard to be better every day, but actually the most successful is McDonalds. They all have their own ways of publicity and their own marketing strategies and we can’t deny that it is working quite well even if they aren’t the best fast food chain in the world. I think that McDonalds with their Happy Meal really made a difference, because since the children are little, they know about McDonalds and maybe not about the other fast food chains. As they grow up they will get to know the others, but they favorite may still be McDonalds.