The McDonalds brand started developing in 1954. Ray Kroc, had teamed up with the McDonalds brothers and began the production by opening 8 restaurants. However the three entrepreneurs didn’t stop there, they continued opening more branches and began to work out a way the brand can appeal to certain group markets. They came up with a friendly mascot whom the kids could look up to and correspond the brand with. Ronald McDonald was the name, and he made his first TV appearance in 1963. This shows us that McDonalds have not just relied on customer recommendation, but have used advertising to certain markets in order to gain customer awareness. This shows great innovation, especially in a time where advertising was limited to radio and newspapers.
Successful entrepreneurs acknowledge that failure is a key step before success. They aren’t afraid to fail, as they can only learn from mistake and this will help them not to make the same mistakes in the future. Businesses such as McDonalds can develop extremely quickly due to their large scale operating stores, however in order to fully capitalise on certain newly designed goods and promotion schemes, McDonalds must apply these goods and promotion schemes in every branch across the country. This can result in more customers and higher profit margins if it’s satisfying for the customers, which will make the business more profitable. However if these schemes aren’t what the customers want, McDonalds may need to withdraw the schemes and this will be not only a waste of time but also money.
McDonalds recently released the ‘I’m loving it’ campaign, which was a risk as they were also releasing a new product range. If the customers don’t buy the new range of products then the ‘I’m loving it’ campaign wouldn’t be worth continuing. This is an decision the managers and directors at McDonalds will have to make, so this skills is required of them in order for McDonalds to be successful.
- Able to identify and exploit marketing opportunities
Identifying- A key skill that an entrepreneur possesses, is to be able to identify a marketing opportunity and more importantly to be able to exploit it. For example when camera’s were released on the latest mobile phone, there was undeveloped market for memory card readers as there was no other way to transfers the photos to a computer or to get them developed. Entrepreneurs that saw this influx in memory card readers would have looked to get hold of enough stock that was demanded and made the most of the fact that there would have been no competition. Therefore the profit margin can be increased, and this will make the business more profitable. Therefore this is a skill that would be required to make a business more successful.
When McDonalds were losing sales due to the growing concern regarding obesity levels in the UK, McDonalds released their ‘I’m Loving it’ campaign. This clearly shows that McDonalds have the skills of being able to identify and exploit marketing opportunities as the ‘I’m loving it’ campaign shifted the heath concerns away from the McDonalds branch, and enabled McDonalds to grasp the business from the market conscience consumers. This will result in more sales and a more satisfying customer.