McDonald’s tactic is….?
Oct 8th, 2010 by crystallee
In class nine of our class, I learnt the differences between tactics and strategies. Tactics are short term, and they are made in order to address specific objectives. Strategies are long term, and affect a firm’s overall direction. Tactics are measured quite easily whereas strategies are harder to measure.
Recently, McDonald’s had an offer where if you bring in Monopoly® money into any Alberta or British Columbia location on October 6th and 7th, you would’ve been able to get an order of large fries for free. (Who doesn’t like freebies?!) People who may not think about a company’s tactics when seeing something like this, but after our last class about strategies and tactics, I was really confused about what McDonald’s tactics were for this particular promotion!
A friend suggested that maybe Monopoly® wants to reuse and recycle their paper money and therefore collaborated with McDonald’s (along with their yearly promotion of the Monopoly® game that you can play when you purchase particular items). At first thought, it sort of made sense. Maybe Monopoly® is trying to raise awareness that they’re environmentally friendly too? After giving it some more thought, no, it doesn’t make sense for Monopoly® to do this because the paper money being brought in may be recyclable, but what’s in it for McDonald’s? They probably make more profit from just selling the fries itself than to take the Monopoly® paper money from consumers…
After much consideration, having people come in to stores being able to get free fries also meant that they would order other things along with fries. Most people don’t just eat fries by itself when they walk into McDonald’s, especially if customers bring their children in with them. With the purchase of some products, they are able to add to their collection of the Monopoly® stamps. This was McDonald’s strategy! Most people would go on thinking “yay freebies!”, but with a business mindset, I think this was a brilliant tactic!