Don’t you hate it when you’re in a foreign country, craving some McDonalds and they do not have that delicious yellow McDonalds mayonnaise that they sell here in the Netherlands? It doesn’t matter if you go to a different McDonalds restaurant, because that delicious sauce is only available here. But why?
There are about 35,429 McDonalds worldwide and McDonalds opens a new restaurant every four hours. Before opening up a new restaurant, McDonalds does some thorough market research in order to understand the needs and wants of the consumers in that specific region. Then, if needed, McDonalds adapts their products and promotion campaign.
Tastes and preferences vary across the globe and in order for McDonald to be a key player in different international markets, they need to adapt and develop their products. When we take a look at a McDonalds in India, we will not see any dish on the menu that contains beef. The Big Macs are not sold in Indian restaurants, as most of the population believes in Hinduism, and therefor are replaced by vegetable burgers, or burgers made from chicken or lamb. Vikram Bakshi, the managing director of McDonalds in India states, “It really doesn’t make sense to sell beef in a country where 85% of the population doesn’t eat it or will even avoid a restaurant where beef is served.” In Israel Big Macs are served without cheese because meat and dairy products have to be separated in order for McDonalds to be seen as a kosher restaurant. In Germany they sell beer, while wine is being served in France. Noodle soup is served almost everywhere in Asia and pasta is served in Italy. Here in Holland we have the McDonalds mayonnaise that you cannot buy in any other country.
But McDonalds doesn’t only adapt their products; they also change the way they prepare their food. When we take a look at Malaysia and Singapore we see that the meat used for burgers is prepared according to the Muslim law. They received a Halal certificate that shows that their products are in prepared in line with the Halal guidelines.
When we look at McDonalds advertising campaigns we can see that for every country the advertisement is new and different. In China for example Moreover, in Southern China, McDonald’s is careful not to advertise prices with multiple occurrences of the number four because in Cantonese, the pronunciation of the word four is the same as the word death. In Japan they make sure that their ads show some images associated with family, because family ties are very important in Japan.
I think McDonald has done an amazing job by carefully researching and pointing out consumers’ needs and wants and adapting their marketing strategy completely to the population of a certain country. Of course, it’s annoying that I cannot get my mayonnaise anywhere but here, but because of this there are McDonalds restaurants in every country that I visit, which is always very convenient. ;)
