How does McDonalds attract its customers Essay Example

see young glamorous models and people buy the product because they think if they have it they will be like the people on the adverts.2. Price. McDonalds competes on price not quality so its customers do not have to be really rich to be a Mcdonald's customer.

McDonald's prices usually stay around about the same as time goes on. But with the happy meals, McDonald's charged a low price when it was new to get people interested in it and once it was established McDonald's increased the price but this did not work as the price was lowered to the original price. Maybe McDonald's should have used skimming- started off with a high price which helps make the happy meal desirable to people with large incomes and when it has become established McDonald's could have lowered the price to get more people interested but people with a larger income wouldn't buy it in the first place and a couple of pence isn't going to make much difference so maybe what they done was right. Skimming is more known with electrical goods, like DVD players- a few people bought them when they were first introduced at a high price, now a lot of people have it at a cheaper price.

This is good for the company as it gets them more money. This pricing is better than just starting off at a price and it staying the same, as more people will buy it at different time. However, price is not that important for some really expensive, good-quality products. For example, if a car costing �50,000 was reduced in price by �5,000 it wouldn't make more people buy

it because if someone is willing to pay �45,000 for a car they would probably be willing to pay �50,000.Petrol is quite similar to this because people will keep buying the same amount of it no matter what the price is, to a certain extent. Here is the demand curve for petrol: Other firms like KFC and Burger King have to charge similar prices to McDonald's this is because if they charged noticeably higher prices people will go to McDonald's and if they were noticeably lower they will lose profit.

Some restaurants, like Subway charge different prices to students for the same product, this is good for students and will get them to eat there but its not good for people like OAPs because they might want a discount as well.3. Promotion. There are many different ways to promote or advertise a product. Firms advertise for four main reasons: To make consumers aware of new products (like the new salads at McDonald's) To remind consumers about existing products (like the happy meals) To persuade consumers to persuade consumers to switch from rival products To improve the image of the business the ultimate aim of advertising, of course, is to sell more products.McDonald's advertise on TV, bus stops, newspapers, magazines, radio and billboards.

But where they advertise depends on their target audience. For example, they are not going to advertise the quarter pounder meal in an eating healthy magazine. Also the size of Mcdonald's means that its not going to advertise only in the Bognor Regis local paper. McDonald's budget is much larger than that of a smaller private company.

McDonald's uses both informative and persuasive adverts, the informative

ones are about eating healthy and the persuasive ones persuade people to buy the food sometimes, with TV adverts they show people eating the food and really enjoying it. There is a theme tune for Mcdonald's, which is Justin Timberlake's song "I'm lovin' it." This will attract a lot of customers as Justin is a very famous star and a teenage heartthrob and the song is very famous.Although advertising gives people information and makes them aware of the product, subsidizes newspapers and magazines so they cost less and makes money for the firm because it will hopefully pull in more customers, it can make a lot of people want things they do not need and costs money so the firms have to charge more for their products and if the adverts do not work then the money is wasted and the opportunity cost of employing people in advertising is they could be spent on making things.McDonald's is a very famous brand name, and because it is famous more people are attracted to it than a restaurant that is not as well know.

I think this is because people trust it and it has got quite a good name for itself.McDonald's famous logo, the "golden arches" are what most people associate McDonald's with. I think that because of their simple design, the arches are more famous than their main rivals' logos (BK and KFC) because I don't even know what they are.McDonald's has a lot of special offers; for example, earlier this year if you bought a Big Mac on a Saturday between 1 and 3pm you will get one free. Also, there was a 99p menu

where there were products like large fries, McFlurry or a large drink for 99p. They have given out prices as well, for example in special straws (which you got when you bought a certain meal) there were prices, like money or tokens for Mcdonald's products.

This kind of special offers get a lot of people interested in McDonald's and attract more people.McDonald's is famous all over the world and advertises all over the country but little fish and chip shops will not advertise on the TV, for example because it is too expensive and a waste of time. Place. Where a firm sells its products is very important because if they sell their product in a place where their target market cannot see then they will not get as many customers as they would if they sold it in a place where their market are going to see.

There are a lot of McDonald's restaurant's inconvenient places, like in town centers and on motorways so when people have been shopping or driving for a long time and are hungry, Mcdonald's is the most suitable place to eat. So I think Mcdonald's has an added bonus that it is convenient and the food is made quickly and there are "drive-thrus" to attract more people. I think that McDonald's restaurants will always be successful as long as it changes when people's tastes change so I think the product life cycle goes a bit like this:1. = Development2.= Introduction3. = Growth4. = Maturity5. = DeclineBut I think that certain products like the McDonalds hotdogs, which they got rid of this, maybe because they were not doing that well. Here is

the product life cycle for the McDonalds hotdogs: I am now going to use some primary research to ask people what they think about McDonald's and their rivals. I designed a questionnaire with nine questions and I gave them to 20 people, half men and half women with a variety of ages.

Finally, most people go to McDonald's because it is convenient, cheap, tasty, the food is made quickly and it is healthier than what it used to be. Here are some graphs to show my results clearly:After I finished my questionnaire, I wanted to find out more about McDonald's so I wrote to the company, in London and asked for some more information but they did not send anything back so I just visited their website but it was basically just advertising it's products. evaluation am now going to evaluate everything that I have found out in this investigation.McDonald's attracts millions of customers every day. This is because it is convenient, cheap, quick, easy and healthier than it used to be.

It also has the added bonus that it is very famous and McDonald's restaurants are very common. Also it sponsors a lot of things. For example the euro 2004 football, this would have bought a lot of customers in because a lot of people watched it. McDonald ha special offers a lot like buy one get one free, discounts, and competitions which not only keep the customers they already have, but get new customers in.I think that the advertising attracts new customers but the convenience keeps the customers returning.

However, the evidence that I have found out from my questionnaires show that most people have seen

adverts, but are not temped by them. This might be because there are so many of them and Mcdonald's is everywhere, so they might just annoy people. Also, Mcdonald's has economies of scale, which attracts customers because it's a large firm so it is able to cut costs and get more profit. This will lead to more customers and make it bigger still.I think that Mcdonald's is more successful than burger king and KFC and it attracts more customers because burger king and KFC cannot cut costs as much as Mcdonald's because they are smaller. But Mcdonald's has to be careful and make sure they do not have diseconomies o f scale which happens when firms get too big.

ConclusionOverall, I think Mcdonald's is doing very well at the moment and will continue doing well if it satisfies its customer's wants and needs. I think my investigation has been very successful and worthwhile.