Introduction
McDonald’s Restaurants is a fast food franchise company which was started in San Bernardino, California by two brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in 1949 and was later purchased by Ray Kroc in 1954 who expanded it to the restaurant system that it is today (Ritzer, 2010). He founded the McDonald’s Corporation in 1955 and after five years he bought the exclusive rights to the McDonald’s name. McDonald’s had by 1958 sold its 100 millionth hamburger. Ray Kroc’s dream when he bought McDonalds was to invest in quality. He wanted to sell burgers that tasted the same in all states in the US. This dream took over 30 years for him to satisfactorily say that the restaurant was a success. This has seen it expand its operations from the US to other cities in the world (Schlosser, 2012).
To achieve this dream, McDonald’s Restaurants has over the years invested heavily in their product design process. This is because they realized that customer preferences and needs are always changing and they have had to address these changing preferences and needs or lose their competitive edge in the restaurant industry. The strategic managers at McDonald’s have also had to incorporate supplier’s suggestions into their product designs since the availability of production resources directly affect their production process.
This is because they realized that the quality of their final products depend on the quality of the raw materials used. This also allows them to come up with the most cost effective production processes since they are also in business for profits. McDonalds are known for their food and with the limited technological threshold that food offers they have had to concentrate their technological efforts on their management as well as internal structures. These have served to boost the franchise’s growth especially in its expansion strategy (Schlosser, 2012).
Implications of technology
The implications of technology at McDonalds are mainly identified in their production structures and their management structure. This particular adoption of technology mainly stems from the top management and then it is communicated to the rest of the franchises all over the world. Identification that technology is particularly important in their operations, serves to ensure that they maintain their competitive edge in the fast food business (Jasmand, 2007). The implications of technology at McDonalds are identified in reference to their organizational culture, marketing, customer satisfaction, and human resources.
Organizational culture
The particular organizational culture at McDonalds dictates that they have to be efficient in their provision of services to their customers. It also requires that they maintain the highest levels of professionalism by ensuring efficiency in producing and serving quality food. The introduction of technology in their organizational strategies has served to ensure that everyone who has a stake in the franchise applies particular systems to ensure their efficiency in customer service as well as the uniformity of service among the franchises (Baskerville, 2005).
The adoption of new inventory management software in their respective franchises has also enabled them to manage their supply of the specific commodities that are identified as their signature meals (Nemati & Barko, 2004). This software ensures that they have enough produce to make the food in time even without having to conduct a manual inspection of their stores. The same is applied to estimate the demand patterns of their customers in terms of the particular products that are demanded at a particular time to ensure ready supply of food as well as efficient service (Nemati & Barko, 2004). The fact that technology is embedded in their daily activities, serves to make it part of the organizational culture.
Marketing
McDonalds have incorporated the use of technology in their marketing strategies in the past and have continued to apply any new technology that comes into the market. They have previously adopted advertisement on television when television became popular as well as telemarketing. With the advent of the internet, e-marketing and social media, the company has had to revise their marketing strategies to incorporate these new technologies too (Brown, 2005). They have identified that they have to review their strategies to include new developments so as to stay relevant in the fast food industry. The use of online advertising has served to increase the fast food chain’s customers.
This has ensured that they are able to compete effectively with other players in the same industry as the market’s perception of their products is deemed to be higher than that of their competitors. In the past few years they have also taken up social media marketing as a platform to communicate to new customers. This is advised by the fact that their target market is mainly the young, who do not have time to cook their own food at home and, therefore, result to fast food restaurants (Baskerville, 2005).
This population dominates the social media platform and to effectively communicate with them they had to adopt social media in their marketing strategies. This has served to increase their portfolio of customers as well as increase the loyalty of their current customers. The fact that it allows them to communicate directly with the customers also ensures that they have immediate knowledge on the particular needs of the market as they change and, therefore, move to satisfy them before their competitors can move in to capture their customers (Jasmand, 2007).
Customer satisfaction
The particular aspect of customer satisfaction is especially important for a fast food chain since the perception of customers in regard to food tends to travel quite fast. It is identified that customers’ perceptions can build as well as demolish a restaurant business quite fast and in this case it has to be carefully entrenched in their management strategies (Hawkes, Blouin & Henson, 2010). Customer satisfaction is also known to have a major impact on the competitive edge of any business and in this case the managers have to be very careful about their customer satisfaction strategies.
In order to improve customer satisfaction, the company has had to adopt innovative technologies in their service provision processes (Brown, 2005). These are mainly targeted at increasing the efficiency with which the customers are served as well as facilitating the communication between the company and its customers (Ritzer, 2010).
The use of electronic order processing systems has ensured that customers can have their orders prepared and served in record time especially since the whole concept of fast food restaurants, lies in the fact that they can provide food in time. It is identified that delaying customers’ orders is one of the major undoing of the fast food business.
With the increased networking among customers, a bad comment on the customer service in a restaurant could spread to many people and end up ruining the whole chain of restaurants (Hawkes, Blouin & Henson, 2010). The communication between the company and the customers ensures that they can receive feedback from the customers on their experiences in the restaurants as well as be able to directly respond to the complaints of customers in time. The adoption of social media as a platform in their public relations efforts has served to ensure efficient communication as well as increased customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Human resources
The management of human resources at McDonalds has been challenging especially with the varied needs of the markets that they operate in as well as the different cultures that they are exposed to in all these markets. This has made the formulation of a single strategy at the company’s headquarters to manage the human resource in all the franchises, impossible. They have, however, set out some basic requirements that all franchises have to adhere to in their management of human resources in their specific market (Royle & Towers, 2002).
Among these is a particular efficient communication structure that ensures that communication from the top management at the headquarters gets to the lowest level employees in time and in full (Ritzer, 2010). This has led them to adopt different technologies that give them a platform to effectively communicate with the rest of the employees.
This is meant to support communication from the top to the bottom as well as from the bottom to the top. This serves to ensure that all their employees are comfortable since they can communicate their grievances to the top management, which then addresses them in a reasonable amount of time (Royle & Towers, 2002). It also gives them an idea of the prevailing conditions in the market by providing them with direct information from the employees on their observations in their respective markets.
References
Baskerville, R. (2005). Business agility and information technology diffusion: IFIP TC8 WG 8.6 international working conference, May 8-11, 2005, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. New York: Springer.
Brown, D., R. (2005). The food service manager’s guide to creative cost cutting: over 2,001 innovative and simple ways to save your food service operation thousands by reducing expenses, Volume 1. New York: Atlantic Publishing Company.
Hawkes, C, Blouin, C, & Henson, S. (2010). Trade, food, diet and health: perspectives and policy options. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Jasmand, C. (2007). The Adoption of Self-Service Technologies: The Role of Consumer Readiness, Trust, and Experiences. New York: GRIN Verlag.
Nemati, H, & Barko, C. (2004). Organizational data mining: leveraging enterprise data resources for optimal performance. New York: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
Ritzer, G. (2010). The McDonaldization of Society 6. Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press.
Royle, T, & Towers, B. (2002). Labour relations in the global fast-food industry. London: Routledge.
Schlosser, E. (2012). Fast Food Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin.