McDonalds case study

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:Engineering

Document 1

Introduction 6 2. Literature Review 7 2. The Research Questions 7 2. Customer Satisfaction 8 2. Service Quality 9 2. The Sampling Techniques 18 4. Results and Analysis 19 4. Qualitative Research Result 19 4. Participants Personal Data 19 4. Research Findings 21 4. The researcher investigates and theorizes the presence of positive correlation between quality of food, the customer’s price in achieving customer loyalty and satisfaction. of clients. These have major roles in influencing the loyalty of clients of McDonald’s Inc. self-administered questionnaires were given to the respondents. The outcomes of this research indicated that every independent variable such as tangibles, responsiveness, perceived value and assurance had significant relationship with the dependent variable which is customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Moreover, the research will also discuss how food quality, service quality and price in customer satisfaction. Introduction In the current ever-increasing globalization of brands and services, the service-oriented enterprises must attend to the satisfaction of their clients both internationally and domestically while transcending different cultural values in every country.

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This paper focuses on McDonald’s fast food restaurant which is considered the largest in the world with its headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. The world is increasingly changing with the population growing, expansion of cities, rising of temperatures and the stretching of basic resources including food and water to their maximum limits. This is an aspect which McDonald’s strives to achieve through collaboration with many of its customers to achieve customer fulfillment. This is for purposes of improving quality, interactions between the provider of service, customers and the experience of the clients. Quality is considered a prerequisite to conducting business, meaning service quality is critical for survival because it assures the satisfaction of clients. In McDonald’s, assessing services’ quality is achieved during the delivery of the service, and it has a close connection with the satisfaction of clients.

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For the building of customer loyalty, there is need for blending the emotional, value and physical elements of an experience into one. McDonald’s has over 20,000 restaurants in over a hundred countries and serves over 30 million clients on a daily basis globally (Vomberg et al. Profit for an organization is not regarded as the basic concern because it is the feedback received in the aftermath of satisfying the clients. Provided there is customer satisfaction, the profit levels of an organization will definitely increase. Alongside the more intense competition in the current market and rising awareness of consumers, satisfaction has an important impact on the profit for companies. It also has the possibility of offering the future service quality or product of an organization as a reference in the past customer assessment.

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Thus, customer satisfaction is considered an identified index which is broadly applicable in the measurement of the consumption behaviors of customers. Responsiveness refers to the willingness, readiness or the concern of employees to offer a service. It is inclusive of the delivery of timely services. Assurance refers to the competence, courtesy and knowledge of the service workers and their capacity of conveying confidence and trust. Competence is possessing the necessary knowledge and skills for the performance of a service. A great design possibly satisfies the desires and needs of clients. A well planned strategy must offer a whole description of the encounter of services and helps with the identification of the existing or potential problems in a given service process. Convenience The most critical thing for an organization of the size of McDonald’s is keeping the customers by establishing more convenience in the process of service delivery (Reicheld).

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When consumers think that the service of the company is inconveniencing, then they will have a lower will of repurchasing (Jones). Thus, provided the industry can offer different convenience to its clients, it will increase the purchase will of the customers (Brown 1989). It will subsequently give the customers the chance of staying with the organization. Attitudinal loyalty then becomes the emotional or psychological dedication towards a given brand and it thus measures loyalty based on the affection one has towards the brand. The behavioral loyalty defines the actions of the customer and not how he or she thinks. It assesses the loyalty of the customer in relation to the actual consumption, duration, repeat purchase, market share, frequency and the recommendations by word-of-mouth (WOM).

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Therefore, it relates to the degree which clients use or buy a service and the future intentions of purchasing. Composite views loyalty as a mixture of both behavioral and attitudinal variables. The cost is the sacrifice which clients have made to acquire the service or product. Also, the external factors include the costs of switching, perceived value, situational factors, trust, commitment and satisfaction. The other determining loyalty factors which have been highlighted in literature are consumer socialization and the cultural anthropology. First Journal The first journal assesses “Customer Satisfaction in Fast Food Industry” by Manjunath and Reginald (2016). The researcher focused on sample size of 100 participants to collect data using convenient sampling. Moreover, to check for the reliability of the questionnaire, the researcher used pilot testing.

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However, the researcher’s methodology was very simple and short thus making it not prudent. Additionally, there was more theory on the methodology part as compared to secondary data that would have made the research more valid. Thus, this study will be used sparingly (Sabir et al. Third Journal According to this journal, the researcher aims to test the effect of physical environment, price fairness and food quality impact on the Customer satisfaction in fast food restaurants Hanaysha (2016). Importantly, the hypothesis shows the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The hypotheses include: • H1 (First Hypothesis): customer convenience has a direct effect on customer satisfaction in the fast food industry. • H2 (Second Hypothesis): service quality has a direct effect on customer satisfaction in the fast food industry.

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• H3 (Third Hypothesis): food quality has a direct effect on customer satisfaction in the fast food industry. Methodology This section presents the use of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The utilized qualitative method was phenomenological. Choosing the qualitative study design was an approach which was arrived on after much consideration of the aspects of the case being studied. Experience was used in inferring general tendencies towards customer loyalty which was the phenomenon under study. This research applied already established information and assessed the same data to show the hypothesis and correlations. The selection of the research design strategy was cognizant of the gathered information. The qualitative study design gave room for many respondents to offer information on the study questions which were part of the questionnaire.

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This gave the chance of comparing and contrasting the responses to arrive at a major conclusion. Note that the number of the respondents in the study was 130. This process was not expensive, but timely and easy to administer. Regardless, the whole process had its downside, given that getting the permission of some experts proved difficult. There was a cross sectional data collected from 130 respondents. The convenience sampling technique was used in this study because it was not practical to collect sample from the company. The data was analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics including frequencies and means, one-sample t-test, analyzing variances and multiple regressions. Multiple regressions were used in the examination of the relationship between customer loyalties and satisfy action.

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Sampling Design 3. The third approach was convenience sampling which was distributed by choosing the respondents from the finding. The questionnaire included five key parts. The first part in the questionnaire is that of screening for the selection of precise respondents in this research. The second to the fifth section of the study included the five-point Liker-scale in the instruments for research. The researcher utilized the liker-scale in the evaluation of the loyalty of the customer towards McDonald’s brand. Gender Figure 1: Gender In reference to the figure above, there were 16 female and 9 male participants that participated in the interview session. More female are interested with fast foods as compared to male. Age Group Figure 2 Age Group The figure above shows the participant’s age from 18 to 26 years.

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Most teen are likely to eat from a restaurant as compared to older people. The percentage is high between the ages of 21 and 23. Participant’s Personal Data The researcher involved collected 99 questionnaires that were used to analyze data. The individuals had different background, age difference as well as the gender. Gender Figure 1: Gender In reference to Figure 1, the interviewees consisted of 54 females and 45 females that took part in filling of the questionnaires. Thus, more female are interested with fast foods as compared to males. Age Group Figure 2 The figure shows the age groups of the 99 participants out of the targeted 130. The most reliable dimensions as shown in the table are that of assurance, then reliability, tangibility, empathy and responsiveness. Generally, the closer the coefficients of reliability towards 1.

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the better the chances of customer satisfaction. The values of reliability which are less than 0. are viewed as poor compared to those which are in the ranges of 0. The multiple regression models were used in the determination of the relationship between the dimensions of customer loyalty and satisfaction. These outcomes showed that there is a relationship between the loyalty and satisfaction variables. This means that the satisfaction of the clients will result in the loyalty of clients of McDonald’s. This infers to the variables including reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, empathy and assurance resulting in the determination of the loyalty of clients. These results show that the predictor variables explain the variance in the loyalty of customers. This means that these factors are parallel to the factors of success for the provided services by McDonald’s.

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This in turn will assist the company in the initiation of more strategies or plans based on the combinations of these dimensions. ANOVA The mean square is more than 0. and the Anova is lower than 0. that’s showing a strong and positive relationship between the variables and the overall performance of McDonald’s. The outcomes in this present research demonstrate that regardless of tangibles being contributing determinants in satisfaction of customers, they do not have an impact on the decisions of clients to remain loyalty to their company. This means that having physical environment is not regarded as a convincing factor for clients in keeping patronizing the McDonald’s services. These outcomes are also contradictory to the previous research which ascertained that tangibles contributed to the loyalty of clients.

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Nonetheless, this finding is in consistence with those of Kheng et al. which stated that the tangibles do not have significant influence on the loyalty of customers. They do not offer any compelling reasons for the loyalty of customers to their brand. This means that they are critical factors for satisfaction of clients but they are not strong determinants in the making of customers loyal. The fast food restaurants need to find ways of innovative means of designing the loyalty of programs for the retention of customers and not providing average services. Empathy is also not important in the achievement of the loyalty of customers. Empathy then is not an important factor in the determination of the loyalty of customers. This is because persons with lower education levels have fewer expectations, and have high appreciation levels which make them more ready to remain loyal to a brand.

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With the intensifying competition in the fast food retail industry, the relevance of retention of customers has been considered a critical aspect for managers. The success in the fast food industry is largely dependent on loyalty and satisfaction. Thus, the necessity for maintaining a mutually benefiting relationship with the esteemed clients cannot be underestimated. Having an understanding of the casual relationship for the customer loyalty and satisfaction does not have any important value to managers. This increases the loyalty of clients to the brand. The rest of the four variables such as reliability, empathy, responsiveness and tangibles do not have significant relationship on the loyalty of clients. Even though factors including reliability, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness have positive linkages with the loyalty of clients, the do not have significant impact on the customers’ decisions of remaining loyal.

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Conclusion This study applied the model of testing expectations of clients towards the services which are provided by McDonald’s fast food restaurant. The SERVQUAL model was formed for testing the studies about expectations and this means that a lot of the outcomes are fit to be discussed. Service development and design is one of the critical aspects which results in a business’ competitiveness. McDonald’s in its services seeks to provide value through the creation of solutions, beliefs or satisfactions for its clients. Achieving this objective requires the thought-out process and good planning practices. Quality is considered a prerequisite to conducting business, meaning service quality is critical for survival because it assures the satisfaction of clients. In McDonald’s, assessing services’ quality is achieved during the delivery of the service, and it has a close connection with the satisfaction of clients.

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The second dimension, responsiveness refers to the willingness, readiness or the concern of employees to offer a service. The third dimension, Assurance refers to the competence, courtesy and knowledge of the service workers and their capacity of conveying confidence and trust. The fifth dimension, Competence possesses the necessary knowledge and skills for the performance of a service. Designing a service is an important competitive weapon and it can be used in ways for the creation of more competitive distinctiveness for products. The outcome of the whole process is either a dissatisfied or satisfied customer with the experience in the delivery of the service. With the increasing loyalty, the willingness of the customer in paying the premium price also increases. Responsiveness, which refers to the willingness of helping customers and offering prompt service, also had no important impacts on the satisfaction of customers.

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Reliability which refers to the ability of performance of anticipated services accurately and dependably. However, this does not have an important impact on the loyalty of customers. Empathy is also not important in the achievement of the loyalty of customers. L. Seiders, K. and Grewal, D. Understanding service convenience. Journal of marketing, 66(3), pp. Brown, L. G. Convenience in services marketing. Journal of Services Marketing, 4(1), pp. Chen, C. Eggert, A. and Ulaga, W. Customer perceived value: a substitute for satisfaction in business markets?. Journal of Business & industrial marketing, 17(2/3), pp. Fornell, C. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, pp. Grönroos, C. Service management and marketing: customer management in service competition. John Wiley & Sons. Hallowell, R. and Dupree, J. Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control, Test Item File.

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Prentice Hall. Lin, W. B. Thunderbird International Business Review, 56(4), pp. Oliver, R. L. What is customer satisfaction. Wharton Magazine, 5(3), pp. Harvard business review, 78(4), pp. Reim, W. Parida, V. and Örtqvist, D. Product–Service Systems (PSS) business models and tactics–a systematic literature review. N. Consumer perceived value: The development of a multiple item scale. Journal of retailing, 77(2), pp. Thompson, P. DeSouza, G. Vomberg, A. Homburg, C. and Bornemann, T. Talented people and strong brands: The contribution of human capital and brand equity to firm value. Strategic Management Journal, 36(13), pp.

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