Importance of the Marketing Concept to McDonalds Assignment

Importance of the Marketing Concept to McDonalds - Assignment Example Marketers can only offer service propositions, but their â€Å"value† depends on customers’ experiences and assessments. An organisation uses the marketing concept by interpreting customers’ needs through their values, beliefs, and practices, adopting this understanding to guide organisational vision, mission, and core values, and finally implementing it through intelligence gathering, sharing, and application, one of which is through the marketing mix. See Figure 1 for the Marketing Concept. Organisations use the marketing concept because they are aware that it has been empirically related to higher sales, profitability, product quality, success of new products/services, employee morale, and general performance (Ailawadi, et al., 2006; Shiu and Yu, 2010; van Triest, et al., 2009). Figure 1: The Marketing Concept Source: Nakata and Sivakumar (2001, p.256) MCDONALD’S: COMPANY OVERVIEW McDonald’s Corporation operates and franchises McDonald’s r estaurants in 119 countries. McDonald’s restaurants offer a standard menu, which includes, â€Å"McDonald’s menu includes hamburgers and cheeseburgers, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Filet-O-Fish, several chicken sandwiches, Chicken McNuggets, Snack Wraps, French fries, salads, oatmeal, shakes, McFlurry desserts, sundaes, soft serve cones, pies, soft drinks, coffee, McCafe beverages and other beverages,† including local and limited-time products (Reuters.com, 2013). Furthermore, the company enjoys sustained growth with a global comparable sales growth of 3.1%. Sources showed that some of the target market’s needs and wants are: 1) the need to buy quick and tasty food for busy parents and businesspeople; 2) parents want to give treats to their... This discussion declares that the marketing concept has evolved significantly for the past sixty years. Most of the definitions of the marketing concept in the 1960s emphasise the relationship between organisations and customers, while current definitions in the twenty-first century seek to be more inclusive by embracing a stakeholder approach to defining and attaining â€Å"values†. As the paper stresses McDonald’s Corporation operates and franchises McDonald’s restaurants in 119 countries. McDonald’s restaurants offer a standard menu, which includes, â€Å"McDonald’s menu includes hamburgers and cheeseburgers, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Filet-O-Fish, several chicken sandwiches, Chicken McNuggets, Snack Wraps, French fries, salads, oatmeal, shakes, McFlurry desserts, sundaes, soft serve cones, pies, soft drinks, coffee, McCafe beverages and other beverages,† including local and limited-time products. The company enjoys sustained growth with a global comparable sales growth of 3.1%. The marketing concept is relevant to McDonald’s because of its tools of competition analysis and 7Ps marketing mix. For competition, the next contender to having the biggest global market share is Yum! Brands, Inc. KFC is expanding its menu through adding wraps and local food, even vegetables for some Asian markets. Burger King and Wendy’s are updating their store designs and layout. Apart from competition analysis, McDonald’s can be examined further through its 7Ps marketing mix.