The first thought that comes to mind when thinking of fast food is McDonalds. However, the company has had a 30% slump in profit recently. My knowledge of the McDonald’s crumbling empire stems from an insightful blog post by fellow Sauderite – Peter Lee. I definitely agree with his notion that customer preferences have evolved and McDonalds hasn’t really brought anything truly unique to the table.

(Image taken from wikipedia)

One thing that surprised me when I went to McDonalds recently, was that they were selling parfaits which  can be viewed as a more luxurious food item, when compared to the common burger. According to Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Jennifer Bartashus, “They’ve tried to be something for everyone as opposed to being everything for some people”. With reference to Michael Porter’s Generic Strategies, McDonalds is currently using cost leadership strategies but may need to adopt a variant of the focus strategies to once again dominate the burger loving populace (much of the market is shared with other companies like Burger King). I disagree with Peter’s implication that McDonalds should be more like A&W as it probably can’t compete with its rivals in terms of health options or quality due to its damaged reputation over the years. Instead, it should continue the millennial trend of customizable orders. This should provide McDonalds with the new value proposition it needed like Phillip said. McDonalds has huge economies of scale and should be able to revamp their restaurants to offer this. However, it may need to change its corporate culture to become more accommodating to consumer preferences.