In this report is the role of promotion within the marketing mix explained. As an example
organisation McDonalds is used, and as a product the ‘big mac’ is used.
Product
McDonalds has a lot of different product ranges. Examples of their hamburgers product
range are the big mac and the cheeseburger. McDonalds uses product development by
developing new products in order to extend their product range. For example, McDonalds
just released their new ‘McDouble’. This is a new burger that has two burgers in the
hamburger. McDonalds promoted this new product by creating an advertisement on for
example a billboard or their website saying ‘try out our new McDouble, double the burger,
double the good taste!’.
McDonalds makes sure that the quality of the product is always on point. Because if
someone buys a big mac and it is not good quality, that person will probably never buy the
big mac again and he/she may also tell others about the bad quality of the big mac, that that
person experienced. This is also why it is important to promote the ‘good’ quality of the big
mac.
Price
The price of the big mac is obviously very important. Because if the price is too high, less
people will buy the big mac. This is why McDonalds decided to make the price of the product
not too high and not too low, so that McDonalds will still make enough profit. These factors
all include the pricing of the big mac.
The pricing strategy that McDonalds uses with the big mac is the competition based strategy.
This strategy means coming up with a price that will beat your competitor’s price, so the price
of your burger is lower than the price of your competitor’s price. This is a good strategy to
use with this product, because McDonalds is the largest chain of hamburger fast food
restaurants. This means that McDonalds can buy their burgers for a cheap price and can
also sell them for a cheap price. With this McDonalds will not get a lot of profit per big mac,
but because they sell so many of them, they will get a lot of profit.
When McDonalds uses this strategy, they will also need to use promotion. McDonalds can
do this by for example saying ‘McDonalds is cheaper than Burger King, why pay more when
you can pay less?’. It is very important to promote the fact that McDonalds sells their
hamburgers for less money than Burger King because otherwise people will not know it or
notice it, even though the price is very important for most customers.
Place
McDonalds does not provide the service to deliver food at your home, but it does have an
online website where all the different kinds of food of McDonalds is stated, including the big
mac. Customers can look up the big mac online, and see how many calories and fat the big
mac has. This is done so the customers can see how healthy/unhealthy the big mac actually
is.
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