Mcdonald’s Seniors Restaurant Essay Example
Mcdonald’s Seniors Restaurant Essay Example

Mcdonald’s Seniors Restaurant Essay Example

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  • Pages: 3 (562 words)
  • Published: December 10, 2016
  • Type: Research Paper
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Lisa Aham manages a McDonald’s restaurant with a key customer demographic of senior citizens, and she faces a possible marketing opportunity if she encourages this group of customers to continue congregating at her store. While it is important to keep the “Baby Boomer” generation in mind when coming up with a marketing strategy, Aham should also reflect on the risk she takes, financially and as a segment of a mega-billion dollar corporation, by targeting this demographic of seniors.

Aham has already identified an attractive opportunity instilled in her original marketing plan of offering a monthly breakfast special of low-priced meals and free coffee refills for her patrons aged 55 and older. This has encouraged dozens of seniors to come to her restaurant every fourth Monday of the month, and what’s more, they

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come on a daily basis to meet and get a cheap meal and bottomless coffee. Now she wonders, should she continue to market to this group in her marketing strategy planning and target this demographic, or have a more mass-market approach to appeal to all of her customers?

In evaluating the risks of targeting senior citizens, Aham would like consider the fact that it might not jive with McDonald’s objective of appealing to the everyman, and it might become a drawback for her younger patrons. In fact, Aham may face additional problems if the seniors linger apart from simply putting off the younger patrons. For instance, if these seniors continue to linger in the restaurant and keep going back to the endless free coffee refill “well,” she may lose profits, unless these customers continue to purchase.

Her solutio

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of getting her customers to continue to purchase, by implementing a Bingo game, may also backfire. In theory, this would make customers continue purchasing at McDonald’s, but it also raises a dilemma of putting off other paying customers, and the goal of a fast-food restaurant should be to have a steady stream of paying customers throughout the day. Aham theorizes that Bingo would be a way to pick up business during the 9 a. m. through 11 a. m. lull in profits, but she also faces potentially overcrowding the restaurant, although she thinks this has yet to be a concern.

Another concern Aham should evaluate, and one she likely has included in her marketing strategy, is that she is attempting to please her existing customer base by setting up a Bingo game system. After all, it is about ten times as expensive to gain new customers as it is to retain an existing customer. However, it will not do Aham any good whatsoever if she alienates the majority of her younger patrons and her McDonald’s restaurant gains a reputation of only catering to one age demographic, no matter how friendly, clean and courteous they are.

After all, Aham’s goal should be to raise a profit as one of her main objectives, and if the younger crowd doesn’t show up anymore, then customer satisfaction will dwindle along with her profits. When Aham comes up with her eventual marketing strategy planning, it would likely be a better idea to think like a mass marketer rather than targeting the senior group. To do this, she should focus on the “Marketing Mix” to anticipate the needs of

all of her customers and delight them equally, rather than risking alienating a younger demographic.

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