Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

Worldwide, Ronald McDonald is one of the most recognizable characters to Generation Y by selling cheap eats and constantly updating its menu with popular items such as fruit smoothies and snack wraps... This success did not happen overnight. McDonald's is running business over 119 countries that also means they have been facing vast of problem about the legislation, culture, religion, values, ethnicity of those countries.

In Dearborn, McDonald's falsely advertised its food as being prepared according to Islamic dietary law. They paid $700,000 to members of the Muslim community to settle allegations. In United Kingdom, McDonald's was sued for employing child labor. In china, McDonald's was also accused of not using Chinese in their menus and advertisements , which violates the consumers' right to know.

McDonalds is sensitive in cultural differences in order to predict and control its relationships and operations. They find out the adjustments that are necessary for operating business in a society and make it efficiently. As for example, in India, McDonald's introduces non-vegetarian menu with chicken and fish items only. As most of people of India are Hindu and beef is prohibited for them McDonald's do not offer any beef item there. Strategies in global business are not different than the central strategy but they can vary country to country for getting cope with the society and culture.

Cultural diversity in Asian market complicates McDonald's, however, they went for product diversification to spread out in the Asian market. Because the food habit of Asian peoples are totally different. On the other hand population increase rate is very high in Asia. As a result there is huge potentiality for McDonalds for spreading the market and increase the profit. But for this McDonalds must offer foods as per the demand of the people of those regions. Moreover people always eat local food in their house as a result while they come to a restaurant they want something different like international items. So McDonald has to offer some foreign items beside local items. As a result, McDonald's made a big hit. Now, they owns more than 1,400 restaurants in China, which is the company's third-largest market.