MCD 1020 McDonalds in crisis assignment 代写
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MCD 1020 McDonalds in crisis assignment 代写
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MCD1020 Trimester 1 2017 Problem Based Assessment for Final Exam
Source: The Guardian
McDonalds in crisis
Steve Easterbrook, the new British chief executive of McDonald’s has his own
personal challenge: How to resurrect the world’s biggest burger chain. Easterbrook
will be putting the final touches to a plan he will be hoping will turn around the 60-
year-old company which is rapidly losing customers.
After decades of expansion that saw McDonald’s march into China, Russia and
expand around the world, the burger brand is no longer flavour of the month. A
million people have turned their back on McDonald’s in 2014, and profits went with
them. Last year McDonald’s ’annual net income dropped 15% to $4.7bn - making
2014 one of the worst years in the company’s history.
Easterbrook is under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead of him, and has
billed himself as an “internal activist” and “constructive agitator” unafraid to challenge
convention at the company. “We need to act now, and we need to make an impact.
I’m not looking for incremental steps,” Easterbrook said last week as he announced
the sixth straight quarter of sagging sales, depressed profits and another miserable
outlook. “As you go through turnarounds … they are a little bumpy by nature. And
that does require some bold and decisive decision-making.”
Financial analysts and restaurant consultants reckon that McDonald’s main problem
is that it has largely ignored the changing tastes and ideals of its core customers and
will find it hard to catch up with the new wave of hipper, rival fast-food chains while at
the same time staying cheap and fast enough to satisfy its remaining loyal
customers.
“Can it be done? I’m just not sure it can,” said Patty Johnson, global food analyst at
market research firm Mintel. “The consumer is continuing to evolve away from
McDonald’s’ core mission which was to provide exceptional value in a quick manner.
The operation was set up to produce food ahead of time, so when you got to the
drive-through it was all waiting for you. They had it down to a science.
“But the consumer has evolved from wanting everything cookie-cutter. We are now
all about innovation and individualisation. [People] want gluten-free, vegetables,
hold-the-mayo, we want ‘this’ but we don’t want ‘that’, we’re very specific. But
providing for that will push up costs and wait times, jeopardising McDonald’s’ core
values of speed and time.”
Johnson said McDonald’s’ biggest challenge is winning over the most fought-over
demographic: millennials (people who became teenagers around the year 2000).
“They have a whole different value equation, it’s not just about price and quality. It’s
about morality and ethics and wanting a healthy lifestyle,” she said.
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McDonald’s has tested a new initiative called Create Your Taste that would allow
customers to create individualised burgers costing up to $8 with fries and a drink –
compared to $5 for a standard value meal.
Aaron Allen, a global restaurant consultant says that by feeding 69m people a day
across the world, McDonald’s has a moral duty to improve the health of its food. “But
at the end of the day, if you’re McDonald’s you don’t want consumers to want
healthier food and fresher food, because they’re just not able to deliver it.”
Allen reckoned McDonald’s’ recent moves to improve its ethical and health image by
increasing US workers’ pay (by $1 to $9.90 from July), widening the range of healthy
options and phasing out antibiotic-reared chicken was a “…begrudging change.
They have continually fought these things, McDonalds ignored it, but these changes
have their customers who have changed their eating habits before McDonald’s has
changed its menu.”
With more than 36,000 restaurants worldwide, including 14,350 in the US, sourcing
enough baby carrots for Happy Meals or even cucumbers for new healthier wraps
proved too difficult. “Even if they wanted to go organic, for example, they just
wouldn’t be able to,” Allen said. Indeed Chipotle, so often held up as an example
McDonald’s should follow, has itself struggled to source enough of the ethically
sound ingredients it is famous for.
MCD 1020 McDonalds in crisis assignment 代写
Changing one of the world’s biggest supply chains will be a huge challenge, said
Allen – but not as immense as repairing McDonald’s reputation among both
customers and its own staff. “They’ve got to help us all feel less ashamed about
going to McDonald’s. From the customers to the employees, everyone is ashamed of
going into a McDonald’s.
“Even though staff are paid similarly to workers at other restaurants, McDonald’s
workers are ashamed of where they work. If you have 420,000 employees who are
not proud of where they work that will reflect in the service and quality.”
Taken from: The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/02/steve-
easterbrook-mcdonalds-fast-food-big-league-burgers-shake-shack
PROBLEM BASED LEARNING ASSESSMENT ARTICLE
You now need to write a problem based assessment.
You must:
summarise the article
identify and explain management problems in the article
identify and explain suitable management theory for the article
suggest solutions for the problems using management theory.
MCD 1020 McDonalds in crisis assignment 代写
