Role of Marketing Essentials: McDonald's

TASK 1

P1. Key roles and responsibilities of the marketing function of McDonald's

Marketing function is key process which helps the company to identify and successfully promotes their product in the market. It includes functions like, market research, producing a marketing plan, and product development, as well as strategically overseeing advertising, promotion, distribution, customer service and public relations. All these factors are interrelated with each other and has to be work properly. Marketing generally identifies customers demand and tries to solve it as soon as possible. Planning a strategy is the basic step in marketing. It plays a significant role in developing any business. To achieve their objectives, McDonald's needs to start flexible techniques which can adjust with the customer's perception and demand. There are different roles and responsibilities of the marketing functions of McDonald's to maintain the brand name in the market. Marketing team of McDonald's ensures that every customer they are serving is happy with their services and food provided to them (Armstrong, G. and et.al, 2015). For this the marketing team of McDonald's segments their customers into different groups on the basis of demographic, geographic and psycho graphic variables in the market and also keeping in mind the changing taste and preferences of the customers.

Due to rapid change in consumption pattern, customer's buying behavior and rise in income level, McDonald's has started using differentiated targeting strategy to overcome the issues of customer's needs. McDonald's tries to come up with new products in every short period in order to attract customers especially children as they are more likely to eat fast food as compared to their parents. McDonald's has low infrastructure cost as most of their business is being franchised by other companies. This helps them to increase profitability. Another marketing strategy to popular their brand name in the market is by tie-ups and sponsorship's with well known organizations like, FIFA, Olympics which helped the company to increase their international market in the world. McDonald's employees are dedicated in giving high quality food and services to their customers. For a good marketing functions, several factors are included, such as,

• Gathering and analyzing the market information of interest: Before starting anything, proper information should there of the market.
• Product designing and developments: McDonald's should give efforts in their product designing and its development.
• Market Planning: Planning of all the required thing is necessary.
• Packaging and Labeling: They should occasionally come up with new and interesting packaging and labeling of their product to attract the customers.
• Branding: Its most important for company to have positive branding among their customer. This will ensure that they are going smoothly in the market.
• Customer Support Service: It includes the feedback and complaints coming from the customers side. They have to solve all these issue in time as early as possible for them.
• Promotion: For branding the name, different promotional events has to be organized by McDonald's in order to aware the public about their newly launched services and discounts and offer available for them.
• Storage and Warehouse: This is generally used keep the raw material of company. Need for storage is also important to meet the demand in case of emergency and to avoid unnecessary delays in delivering the product to customers.

P2. Roles and responsibilities of marketing relate to the wider organisational context

The marketing functions includes various factors like, strategy management, marketing research, sales support system, product developments, finance team, distribution systems, human resource department, etc. All these have different roles and responsibilities which helps to promote growth and development of the company. There is a close relation between marketing functions with other organizational functions in the company. From the results or outcomes from the marketing research, McDonald's can plan a strategy according to them (Babin, B.J. and Zikmund, W.G. 2015).

They can understand positive and negative points of the company and can apply several measures to resolve these issues. It's easy to know its strength and weakness, coming threats from the competitors and new opportunities they can have from the market. All of these can be achieved by the marketing strategy. Marketing functions generally include the concept of current and future trends in the market, what their customers are demanding and what are their food preferences, etc. The marketing department of McDonald's plans and execute various methods involving pricing, promotion, distribution, sales, etc. which helps to compliment the target customers of the company. The roles and responsibilities of marketing are explained below:

• Market Research: This is the initial step which is taken by the company and considered to be a major role in the marketing. Before planning or applying any strategy in the market, proper research has to be done by company. This research consists of topics like customer's interests, pricing and quality of the product, competitors profile analysis, etc. in order to deliver the best product and services of the company in the market.
• Market strategies: The team of McDonald's tries to recognize needs and requirements of the targeted customers and provide products and services accordingly. These strategies help to main an equilibrium between the company's objectives and opportunities in the existing market (Baker, M.J. 2014.).
• Market segmentation: McDonald's has segmented their customers into different groups on the basis of age, taste preferences, family, etc. This helps them to serve better service and produce new and unique food items for them.
• Brand Equity: In today's world, customers tends to attract towards different brand which they like or prefer most. To build trust in their customer is the main motto of McDonald's. By doing this, it ensures the business to increase their sales volume and revenue.

A proper marketing function helps to determine the strength and weakness of the company. McDonald's is the number one fast food chain in the world which serves different food items to their customers like, burgers which was the main food items in the past but today it has many options available in their menu for example, fries, cold drinks, wraps, ice creams, etc. this helps the company to gain popularity among children and youngsters. Along with this they also have weakness which the company is working on to overcome it as soon as possible.

They are as follows- McDonald's failed to offer pizza because they are less able to compete with pizza fast food chains. Company has to spend more money and time to train their employees. One of the most famous strategies applied by the company was opening of “Happy Meal” in their menu in the 1970's. This strategy gained a huge popularity among the children and still searching new approaches to grab the attention of the customers towards them. The seven core functions of the marketing department of McDonald's are- their pricing of products they are serving, production or service management, distribution of sales, financing, marketing management, selling and last promotion of the company (Brotspies, H. and Weinstein, A. 2017).

TASK 2

P3. Marketing Mix of McDonald's- The 7 P's of marketing

Marketing mix is defined as a set of different factors or tactics which a company applies to promote its brand or product or service into the market. Marketing mix generally consists of 7 P's that are- product, price, place, promotion, process, people, and last is physical evidence. Explained below are the 7 P's of marketing mix of McDonald's and company's business and marketing strategies.

• Product: It refers to the different products which the company is serving to their customers to satisfy their needs and demands. It primarily consists of items such as burgers, fries, chicken & sandwiches, snacks & sides, desserts & shakes, ice creams, and soft drinks. They also provide a variety of options to them which includes both vegetarian and non vegetarian snakes. They have a specialty in having different varieties of burger like cheese burgers, chicken burgers, McEgg burger, etc. They have also come up with “meal” options into their menu which includes burger, fries and a soft drink at cheaper rates (Ceil, C. 2017).
• Price: This refers to the pricing techniques of the McDonald company's product and services they are delivering. McDonald's follows cost leadership business strategy to set the prices of the product. The main objective of the McDonald's each individual restaurant is to provide food items at a very moderate rate which can be easily affordable by all group of customers. Prices set by McDonald's is very different from their competitor's pricing rate which is much cheaper. McDonald's set their product's prices with a demand based methodology which does not prescribe pricing to their franchisees as they set their own price to the products.
• Place: It is the area where the organization decides to operate. McDonald's outlets are evenly spread throughout the world. The main aim of them is that the customer can easily access that place. McDonald's has unique distribution strategy in different countries like it provide home delivery in some countries. Many outlets are open 24 hours a day which makes customer to enjoy their services at any time they want to. All these are different measures applied by McDonald's to attract customers towards them (Groucutt, J. and Hopkins, C. 2015).
• Promotion: It is a process through which the company communicate with their customer directly or indirectly in order to understand their requirements and demands. Different promotional activities are organized by the company to aware the customers about their new products and about their discounts and offers which are currently available for them. It can be done through various ways such as, advertising in TV, radio station, newspaper, magazines, etc, organizing different events in the particular area. In today's generation social media plays a huge in promoting the brand name. It can be done through posting ads in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Now-a-days people prefer social media over other options. Other than that, company uses different sales technique for example, if a customer buys 6 burgers along with cold drinks that he/she is will get an ice cream for free (The Marketing Mix 4P’s and 7P’s Explained. 2016).
• Process: It is a process which is generally accounts the different activities undertaking by the company to deliver their services to customers. A good process ensures that company is saving their time and money by increasing their staff member's efficiency. They should maintain their standard of service. McDonald's undertake several activities to provide a better environment to their customers for example, the food prepared in McDonald's are clearly visible to their customers. They can see how their order is being prepared. Other factors which are included in this are how comfortable the customer is in placing order, how much time does it take to deliver and the staff member is treating them (Lanier, P. and Lanier, M. 2017).

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