How is McDonald's using segmentation to attract new customers? As VP of Marketing, what would you do differently?

AS and A Level Business Studies

Marketing 300

Sharry Huang( Ying Huang)

Wednesday 4:00pm---6:40pm

McDonald Case Study

1. How is McDonald's using segmentation to attract new customers? As VP of Marketing, what would you do differently?

To attract new customers, McDonald begins to offer more kinds of food to people. Customers who need to buy different kinds of breakfast for different people don’t need to go to different stores to get their food anymore. What they need to do is just go to a McDonald and then get what they want at once. By noticing that customers may desire to taste different kinds of food, McDonald not only serves the food they are expert in, but also creates more items to people. In this way, customers will not be bored with their dishes. In order to attract midday snackers, McDonal designed a food that people could hold easily. Besides, McDonal has made their stores open for 24 hours. This action brings a lot of customers who are wee morning workers into the stores. In the past, McDonal is famous of its fast service. People ate there were usually the ones who were too busy to have food in the stores. However, McDonal changed its enviroment into more comfortable for attracting retirees, young mothers, families or young people to hang out. The last but not the least, McDonald locate its stores at very convinient places, where can be easily found by people.

If I were the VP of Marketing in McDonald, except doing what they already done, I would like to focus on delivery service. As I know, McDonald is very popular among young students. Thus, I would try to work with schools. I might build a store around schools or offer delivery service to schools. Considering that fast food might be not a good option for children because it doesn’t contain all kinds of nutrients children need to grow up, I probably would like to create healthy meals according to the existing menue for those target customers. And the ...

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If I were the VP of Marketing in McDonald, except doing what they already done, I would like to focus on delivery service. As I know, McDonald is very popular among young students. Thus, I would try to work with schools. I might build a store around schools or offer delivery service to schools. Considering that fast food might be not a good option for children because it doesn’t contain all kinds of nutrients children need to grow up, I probably would like to create healthy meals according to the existing menue for those target customers. And the students can eat what they like during their school time.

2. Discuss McDonald's target marketing strategy to build more business with its existing customers. What additional segments would you recommend to target?

As we know, existing customers of McDonald are widely from younths to olds. What has McDonald done is to divide their customers into different groups and analyze their specific aquirements and try to meet their needs. As far as I know, people are more interested in choose their food freely when they are ordering. Thus, puffets are becoming very charming for customers. However, McDonald basicly just has some set meals that have good price than order the products respectively. As a result, I recommend to designe a kind of set meals that only print limited price, but not to fix the products. In another words, people can choose several food according to their flavors freely and pay at a promotional price.

3. Discuss a market research strategy for the company. What type of research will you need to decide new segments to target and products to create? Please use examples to support your answer.
For example, because McDonald’s customers are all kinds of people, they might would rather to have meals in the stores where make them cofortable with. This provides McDonald an opportunity to build different stores with different decoration styles. For instance, to attractive young children, the stores should be painted in fairy tales style. While for staffs who work in business buildings, they may prefer a quite and relax enviroment. Thus, according to different customers McDonal can create some theme stores that are special for some customers. A good way to do the research is to make some questionnaires and let people fill in. Furthermore, McDonald can take the advantage of internet to collect the ideas among internet users. It is the fact that people usually don’t like filling questionnaires. To get information as soon as possible, McDonald should pay some money. The company can designe some coupons and if people fill the questionnaires, they can get the coupons in person, or print them out if they do online.