BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS

Consumer Prefernece Towards

McDONALDS

SUBMITTED BY :

USMAN ARIF GHOURI(071280)

SUBMITTED TO :MAJ. CH. KHALID MAHMOOD GORSI

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY

1.1 McDonalds

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving nearly 47 million customers daily through more than 31,000 restaurants in 119 countries worldwide. McDonald’s sells various fast food items and soft drinks including, burgers, chicken, salads, fries, and ice cream. Many McDonald's restaurants have included a playground for children and advertising geared toward children, and some have been redesigned in a more 'natural' style, with a particular emphasis on comfort: introducing lounge areas and fireplaces, and eliminating hard plastic chairs and tables. Each McDonald's restaurant is operated by a franchisee, an affiliate, or the corporation itself. The corporations' revenues come from the rent, royalties and fees paid by the franchisees, as well as sales in company-operated restaurants. McDonald's revenues grew 27% over the three years ending in 2007 to $22.8 billion, and 9% growth in operating income to $3.9 billion.

Its outstanding brand recognition, experienced management, high quality food, site development expertise, advance operational system and unique global infrastructure position it to capitalize on global business opportunities. McDonald’s plan to expand its leadership position through great tasting food, superior service, everyday value and convenience and by practicing it they are well known brand all around the world. Its efforts to increase market share, profitability and customer satisfaction have produced high returns to share holders a compound annual return of 24% over the past 10 years.

1.1.1McDonald's vision

McDonalds’ vision is to offer the world’s best and quickest service restaurant experience to its customer all over the world. Being best in the business means consistently satisfying customers better than anyone else through outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value.

1.1.2 McDonald's Mission

McDonald's mission is to be our customers' favorite place and way to eat with inspired people who delight each customer with unmatched quality, service, cleanliness and value every time ... we invite you to be the part of this winning team and give yourself an opportunity to grow with the family of people striving to create smiles on the faces of millions of people everyday.

1.1.3 Values

Our values summarized in "Q.S.C. & V.". Provide good quality, services to customer. Have a cleanliness environment when customer enjoys their meal. The value of food product makes every customer is smiling.

1.2 McDonald's in Pakistan

Aiming to be the world's best quick service restaurant, McDonald's Pakistan opened its doors in September 1998 at Lahore and presently operating in seven major cities with a network of 20 restaurants. With a strong belief in the Ray Krock phrase when you are green you are growing, McDonald's Pakistan has an aggressive plan to expand in all other cities of Pakistan and is rapidly growing with the focus to provide friendly and quick service restaurant experience to our customers.

1.2.1 Lakson Group of Companies

McDonald's Pakistan is a part of the Lakson Group of Companies, with a Head Office in Karachi and a regional office at Lahore. Lakson Group also owned, Lakson Tobacco Co. Colgate Pakistan Ltd, Century Insurance Ltd. Express Newspaper, Cyber Net and various others businesses.

1.2.2 McDonalds Image as an Employer

Our overall image and local reputation as an employer is shaped daily by many factors, including the benefits programs, compensation package, fun working place coupled with numerous enthusiasm activities, employee development programs, and our world renowned best people practices. 

Employees, the key ingredient play a vital role each day in shaping our over all employment image through their performance behavior. Realizing our people strength we provide the best employment experience to our employees in order to achieve the goal of giving the worlds best quick-service restaurant experience to our valued customers. We strive to recruit the best, hire the best, and provide the best place to work.

1.3 INTRODUCTION TO RESEACH PROBLEM

Every research has its own problem and limitations. As a case with McDonalds the main problem is to understand and analyze the consumer’s preference and buying behavior towards the fast food international and local restaurants in Lahore. Focal point of research is on the buying pattern of burgers of McDonalds by consumers in Lahore. Why they prefer McDonalds over KFC, AFC, Hardees and Fri Chicks.

1.3.1 MOTIIVE

The basic motive of research is to study the consumer preference towards McDonalds in Lahore, Pakistan and to know about the buying behavior of consumers for McDonalds.

1.3.2 Objectives

The objective of my research is

To know about the customer satisfaction level associated with the product and the customer preference level

To analyze the buying behavior of burgers by people To analyze and clearly outlining the present need of the consumer To study the factors affecting the consumption pattern.

CHAPTER 2

2. Review of Literature

Review of Literature

While reviewing the literature researcher was able to find prior research in the area of consumer preference towards McDonalds. Many researchers were interested to study the preference of consumer towards fast food chains. Many articles available on the internet provided valuable information about the fast food chains of Pakistan. After studying the preference and overall scenario of fast food chains in Pakistan, we can be able to understand the image of different restaurants in the mind of consumer. So this overview will be helpful in conducting this research.

2.1 Marketing Strategies Adopted by McDonald's and Consumer Perception towards Fast-Food

2.1.1 Summary

Over the past few years the Indian economy has undergone drastic changes- changes that have had the market flooded with multinationals and a variety of products. There has been a sudden upsurge in the Indian industry and exponential growth in specific industries. Today's companies work in a war zone of rapidly changing competitors, technological advances, new laws, managed trade policies and diminishing customer loyalty.

In today's world of cutthroat fierce competition, customer satisfaction is very essential to not only exist but also to excel in the market. Today's market is enormously more complex. Henceforth, to survive in the market, the company not only needs to maximize its profit but also needs to satisfy its customers and should try to build upon from there.

The project title "Marketing strategies and International Business strategies adopted by McDonald's" is the analysis of the service Quality level of fast food industry. This project involves the service level provided by McDonald's and its competitors. The survey was conducted so as to analyze the service quality prevailing in the current industry and the improvement that can be made upon it.

Market research study has been conducted in order to bring out the picture of service quality that exists in this industry and the difference in service quality that exists in the market. Like what are the customer's preferences about the hospitality provided by the fast food industry.

After this a comprehensive and comparative analysis has been made and conclusion has been made keeping in mind the detailed analysis of the findings, which has been collected through the market research.

2.1.2 Research Objective

The primary objective of study was Marketing Strategies adopted by "Mc Donald's". This objective is supported by four secondary objectives, achieving them will lead to the fulfillment of primary objective.

They include: 

To understand the marketing strategy of McDonalds with respect to targeting, positioning and Marketing mix. 

To understand consumer perception and to find buyer behavior towards fast food.

To Compare Service quality of Competitors vis-à-vis McDonalds 

To find out the ways by which McDonald's can improve upon its service quality and bring more satisfaction to customers and thus add value to its bottom line.

2.1.3 Conclusions 

McDonald takes the share on this attribute by providing the customer with fast and friendly services. 

At McDonald we get your order usually within 60-90 seconds from the time it is placed. Providing the customer fast and friendly services is the philosophy of McDonald's. This is the big advantage McDonald's is having over the other restaurants. 

The customer satisfaction levels are better than the other competitors McDonald's is having.

The advantage McDonald having over the other restaurant is I) Ambiance ii) Employee behavior iii) Cleanliness and iv) Price.

There is a price and service quality factor today, which the customer is looking for. It is giving an edge to McDonald's over KFC and Pizza Hut.

2.1.4 Limitations of Study

1. Certain limitations were inherent with this project work. 2. 100% response rate was not found from the respondents. Some extent of biasness was found because of Brand loyalty while answering the questions. 3. Potential biases such as reluctance of consumers, executives etc. 4. Lack of interest of the respondent was one of the major problems. 5. The Geographic extent of this study was limited to the Delhi market only. 6. The research only tries to present a bird eye view of the entire gamut of Indian Small appliances Market.

The above article was extracted from dissertations by the students of Skyline College. Skyline College is amongst the top MBA and BBA institutes in Delhi, Gurgaon (NCR).

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anubhav_Puri

2.2 Survey: Consumers Prefer McDonald's Over Starbucks

Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald's or more Starbucks? A new report from the Pew Research Center tells of the results it got when posing that oddball question last October in one of its Social & Demographics Trend surveys. Overall, respondents preferred a place with more McDonald's (the choice of 43 percent) to one with more Starbucks (35 percent, with the rest declining to choose). As you'd guess, though, the pattern of response differed significantly among different demographic cohorts.

Age was one sharp dividing line: Among the poll's 18-29-year-olds, Starbucks beat McDonald's by 49 percent to 36 percent. McDonald's had the edge over Starbucks among the 30-49-year-olds (45 percent vs. 37 percent), the 50-64s (43 percent vs. 33 percent) and those 65-plus (48 percent vs. 18 percent). Gender was also a factor. While McDonald's easily outpolled Starbucks among men (46 percent to 30 percent), it eked out just a one-point win among women (41 percent to 40 percent).

In a breakdown of the data by race and ethnicity, McDonald's outpointed Starbucks among white respondents (43 percent vs. 35 percent) and, by a much wider margin, among their black counterparts (56 percent vs. 27 percent). Among Hispanic respondents, though, it was nearly a tie, with Starbucks getting 39 percent and McDonald's 38 percent.

The only one of the survey sample's income brackets in which Starbucks beat McDonald's was the $75,000-plus cohort (48 percent vs. 34 percent). McDonald's had its biggest win among those in the under-$30,000 bracket (51 percent to 28 percent). These numbers dovetail with the breakdown by educational attainment, in which Starbucks won among college graduates (47 percent to 32 percent) while McDonald's won among those with a high school diploma or less (50 percent to 26 percent). Among respondents with "some college," McDonald's had a negligible edge over Starbucks (42 percent to 40 percent).

Regionally, Starbucks had its best showing in the West, where it won by 47 percent to 28 percent. McDonald's won everywhere else, with its biggest margin of victory coming in the Midwest (49 percent to 30 percent). The obvious caveat is that the regional numbers

may reflect the real-life distribution of Starbucks and McDonald's outlets around the country as well as consumer preference in the abstract. 

2.3 Fast foods and ethical consumer value: a focus on McDonald's and KFC

Purpose – Aims to investigate the effect of communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to young consumers in the UK on their fast-food purchasing with reference to McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). 

Design/methodology/approach – Focus groups were conducted to clarify themes and inform a questionnaire on fast-food purchasing behaviours and motives. Attitude statements were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. 

Findings – Most respondents (82 per cent) regularly purchased fast food from one of the companies; purchases were mostly impulsive (57 per cent) or routine (26 per cent), suggesting relatively low-level involvement in each case. While there was scepticism regarding the CSR activity being promoted, expectations about socially responsible behaviour by the companies were nevertheless high. Four factors were isolated, together explaining 52 per cent of the variance in fast-food purchasing behaviour. They were brand value, nutritional value, ethical value and food quality. 

Research limitations/implications – The research was conducted with students, and while these represent a key-target market, any further research should target a more diverse public. 

Practical implications – There are important implications for global fast-food companies in terms of protecting and developing their brand value; they need to respond to the wider food-related debates in society, in particular, those concerning healthy eating and food ethics. They also need to ensure that their business practices are fully consistent with the values expressed in their CSR initiatives. 

Originality/value – The special value of the paper lies in its joining together of current perspectives on CSR and consumer value in the UK food industry as it explores both through the perceptions of young consumers of fast food.

Chapter 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Methodology

The fast food business is highly competitive one. To be successful, it must be able to project the right image as well as meet the needs of customers. Marketing strategies must be formulated to attract customers. This report looks at some aspects of fast food chains in Lahore. It examines the buying behavior of consumers and gauges their perceptions of marketing variables specific to the fast food industry.

3.1Research process

Different steps are to be followed in the research process and they are explained as below:

3.2 Problem Solving

This is the basic step in the research process. It is well said; “A problem well defined is half solved” here the problem is “to analyze the consumer preference towards McDonalds-

3.3 Research design

Once the problem is defined the next step is the research design. Research design is the basic framework, which provides guidelines for the rest of the research process.

The research design for this project is descriptive research design as descriptive studies attempt to obtain a complete and accurate description of this situation. As descriptive research answers the question who, what, where, when and how

3.4 Sampling design

The sampling design used in this project is convenience sampling, as the sample of the consumers for the survey was selected from the branch on McDonalds on Main Boulevard in Gulberg.

3.5 Population

The total element of the universe from which the sample is to be selected to be studied is known as population. The populations of this research are the consumers of McDonalds.

3.6 Sample size

The sample sizes for this research is 30 consumers walking in McDonalds.

3.7 Data collection

Following are the sources for the collection of data:

o Primary source

o Secondary source

3.8 Data collection method

There are three main methods of data collection

o Observation

o Experimentation

o Survey

Design the questionnaire

After determining the sample design and research methodology the next step is to design a

questionnaire.

It is mainly composed of four segments in this investigation, which includes the background

information as well as know how of people regarding burgers and their preferences.

1. First part of the questionnaire consist of

Gender

Age

Family type

This is necessary to predict the lifestyle of the respondents to know their family

background eating habits and preference. This will help in relating that how consumer

preference changes as they grow older and many more things can be added.

2. The second part of the questionnaire conatins informations that:

What are the preferences of consumers regarding the brand

How often the respondent is willing to eat out.

Which brand was purchased by him/her recently.

3. The third part consists of

Information that from where does the respondent is willing to buy his product

from.

From where do the respondent gets information about new products.

What influences the respondents the most while making decisions of buying at a

burger outlet.

4. The fourth part contains

How much a respondent is willing to pay for a meal.

Does the effectiveness of promotional measures are effective

Whether the respondents gives the recommendations and suggestions.

How the respondents give weight age to Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value

for money

Survey method of data collection is used in this research. This is one of the common and widely used methods for primary data collection. A wide range of valuable information about the behavior of the employee’s can be gathered through this method. in this research questionnaire is sole source of primary data however direct interview is also used along with questionnaire in order to get more open ended answers and know their views and opinion.