McDonald's Expands Globally While Adjusting Its Local Recipe

1. McDonald’s built its reputation on the same base: inexpensive food with consistent taste regardless of location, quick service, and a clean and familiar environment. So the strategy is focused on people, products, place, price and promotion.

McDonald’s is conscious it must adapt its plan in the different countries where it has restaurants, but McDonald’s wants to and kept the same base. The brand just adapt its restaurants, its food, its price … It thinks global because, in the worldwide, it remains the same company, with the same strategy and the same image. But McDonald’s acts local because the company adapts itself to the countries’ culture where it is implanted, but also because it’s “using” local products (“le charolais” in France for example), and it adapts its product prices in function of each country.

2. In this type of country, government didn’t want McDonald’s to come in their country because it’s an American brand and it contributes to the “domination” of the USA on the world; these governments didn’t want to adopt the American lifestyle.

In these countries, consumers agreed for McDonald’s establishment because it means for them employment, cheap food, different lifestyle and they could have the possibility to have the same thing than the other countries of the world.

3. These factors (people, products, place, price and promotion) remind us the four Marketing’s Ps. They have an important role :

a. People : The interests to know the consumers are :

i. In short-term, to know their expectations in their decision process for established marketing actions relevant.

ii. In long-term, to detect the tendency, to imagine new products, and to develop the customer relationship.

b. Products: A product is all that can be offered, acquired or consumed on a market in order to satisfy a need or a desire. There are different areas :

i. Product