Moreover McDonalds has achieved it's goal by adapting to these problems on a global scale taking a hard long look at the brands image and accepting the different challenges each of the different countries pursued, from going all 'green' kitchen in India with its McAloo Tikka potato burger, to the starting signal of it's top architecturally designed restaurants in Paris.
On top of it all it's very important not to forget how McDonald's has chosen to collaborate and use for its own advantage world widely the different local offer instead of importing everything. This means money and jobs for the actual countries welcoming them, and both local and central governors know it, as well as the local population who learns through advertising and other techniques how the beef they are being served comes from farmers in their region.
Nº3.
McDonald's CEO Greenberg was in charge when the burger and fries model started to fade away, it was just when what lacked importance was to sell more burgers and the new objective was to see what other things, in their market, they could control with the money the core business achieved. This meant being stakeholders of different chains, like Donatos, Aroma, or Boston Market.
The increase of cool spots to stop by, like Starbucks, sushi places, etc. pushed the brand even further away form being any hipster headquarters, making McDonalds be McDonald's. What this means is that even if they try their best with Wifi, Ipods and very, very expensive chairs they won't be the consumers choice to take a first date to dinner, obviously in order to avoid looking like a cheap uncool date, so for example, they have achieved to play a role in other types of restaurant that can't offer what theirs can, and also shielding themselves from possible future dramas which could create big fluctuations in their sales (like the mad cow crisis in the mid 90's).
Still McDonald's doesn't let the brand rot, on the contrary, they know that if that couple's date ends up in a relationship they will probably visit McDonalds much more than twice the times they spent in their first date's restaurant, and if this is applied in a global basis they know they must keep their customers as happy and loyal as possible. They achieve this by spending double what their competitors do in advertising, making that advertising globally effective and adding new dimensions to their menus in a 'better-for-you' way for an environmentally conscious lot who won't stop lovin' it.
Nº 4.
It's evident how any realistic brand knows that any company that goes global takes risks of making mistakes, like the initial McDonalds unfashionable "vulgar-cuisine" spaces in France, but thanks to this errors the brand can quickly adapt to that country and even make tryout's in others attracting more consumers. The image of a superbrand that nourishes itself in a destructive manner from the local cultures is shared between some parts of the population who are very sensitive to the problems globalization creates and that feels that the unification of our cultures under the so called American Dream is destructive. This destructiveness is so towards the country's roots and therefore accuse the brand of contributing with an alienating trend of Americanizing the rest of the world who is quickly forgetting their own traditions as the arched brand continues to feed new generations of Mclovers.