Mcdonalds Corporate Identity

Corporate identity is the most significant element to create and strengthen a company’s industrial presence among the competitors. Corporate identity helps a company to establish a name in the consumer’s mind and communicate its image to the target group from the shortest way. While exposing the positive sides among the competitors, it presents the first sights about the qualifications like quality, trust and stability.
If an organization is ruled by the principles rather than the managers or in other words if the principles remain unchanged although the managers are replaced and if that particular organization has qualifications and standards which separates it from the others than we can conclude that organization is a corporation. Corporations do not really need very strong managers. A manager’s success in a corporation is measured by his ability to apply and adapt the existing principles. Main idea behind a corporate identity program is to explain the organization itself and its purpose explicitly in all the business done.
Recent surveys indicated that average human brain is only capable of dealing with seven different units at most at the same time and also ranking them according to the priorities. Companies are bombarding the consumers with advertisements in the daily life. For instance one thousand and two hundreds of advertisements are aired per day on a channel in Germany. Products with no name and no specific producer have almost no chance in an environment like this. Although consumers say that they are not affected bu the advertisements, they still prefer the brands they heard before or seen somewhere.

They prefer the brands they recognize. How do the consumers recognize the brands? They are always facing the products but they do not have enough information about the producers. Because normally consumers do not have the opportunity to look around the production facilities, walk into the offices and get to know with the managers. The identity allows us to identify a particular object and separate it from the identical. If an organization has no identity than it is invisible to the consumers. First McDonald’s restaurant was opened in 1954 by Dick and Mac McDonald in California, San Bernardino.
Now McDonald’s is the leading global food service retailer with more than 32,000 local restaurants serving more than 60 million people in 117 countries each day. McDonald’s is operated globally from the company headquarters in Oak Brook near Chicago. Again in Oak Brook, lots of restaurant owners and employees around the world are trained in the international education center called Hamburger University every year. More than 75% of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local men and women. [1] All the restaurants are operated either by the company or by franchisees.
Controlled by the company and operated independently, distribution centers supply the products to all restaurants. Additionally, all the restaurant employees are trained in storage, handling and arrangement of products and in the delivery of customer service. Operating in 117 countries, McDonald’s has around 1. 7 million employees all around the world in more than 32. 000 restaurants according to the corporate website. Two-thirds of hourly paid staff are high-school graduates aged between 16 and 20. 90% of staff work for 35 hours per week or less. 2] McDonald’s offers a complete benefits package involving health protection, payment, rewards, opportunity to invest for the future to its employees. Although the company claims to offer nice conditions for the employees, recently some of the employes filed lawsuits against the company. One of them sued the company for weight gain and won. Employees are given video tapes designed to make the employee feel comfortable about their first days and give them basic information about McDonald’s. The tapes are considered unrealistic and cliche by the viewers.
People all around the world prefer McDonald’s because of the standards put by the managers. McDonald’s standards was formed by Ray Kroc when he explored the way to create customer loyalty is by assuring quality, successful service and comprehensive cleaning. Since then all the moves to improve McDonald’s system is done according to the standards. That’s how McDonald’s is separated from the other restaurants. With the help of this standards McDonald’s create a corporate identity formed by products&service, environment, information and behavior and thus ensures customer loyalty.
The feeling styled by a powerful corporate identity creates a perception of belonging within the employees and flowing out to the customers it can increase customer loyalty. It also helps the company to deal with vendors and suppliers as well as employees since it explicitly communicates the values and purpose of the organization. Corporate identity is managed well by McDonald’s through its history. For instance, since the consumer group is changing McDonald’s changed its brand image targeting from children into adults to save the customer loyalty.
Two years ago McDonald’s was at the top of “Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index Rankings” in the fast food category. Although the company was not doing well in the rankings lately due to the rumors about the fast food, they have shown a great progress and ranked first in the list. [3] People all around the world prefer McDonald’s because of the standards put by the managers. McDonald’s standards was formed by Ray Kroc when he explored the way to create customer loyalty is by assuring quality, successful service and comprehensive cleaning. Since then all the moves to improve McDonald’s system is done according to the standards.
That’s how McDonald’s is separated from the other restaurants. With the help of this standards McDonald’s create a corporate identity formed by products;service, environment, information and behavior and thus ensures customer loyalty. The feeling styled by a powerful corporate identity creates a perception of belonging within the employees and flowing out to the customers it can increase customer loyalty. It also helps the company to deal with vendors and suppliers as well as employees since it explicitly communicates the values and purpose of the organization.
Corporate identity is managed well by McDonald’s through its history. For instance, since the consumer group is changing McDonald’s changed its brand image targeting from children into adults to save the customer loyalty. Two years ago McDonald’s was at the top of “Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index Rankings” in the fast food category. Although the company was not doing well in the rankings lately due to the rumors about the fast food, they have shown a great progress and ranked first in the list.
According to the recent studies while satisfied customer will tell four or five others about a pleasant experience, unsatisfied ones will tell seven to thirteen others about it. More important than that unhappy customers keep voicing their dissatisfaction for up to twenty-three years. [4] The most important issue about recovering a lost customer is to come to the realization that the company has made a mistake somewhere and there is a problem with customer satisfaction. There are only seldom cases when there is a misunderstanding regarding the issue and therefore it would be wiser to assume that the customer is right and demands attention.
Thus, the personnel should be trained in such a way that he or she will do everything at his or her disposal to help the customer. In very few cases, an unsatisfied customer is the one who has received absolutely terrible service in regards to the product or the service itself. Most of the time however, a lost customer is not a customer who has been unsatisfied once but rather a customer who has been unsatisfied and also has been unsatisfied with the help he or she received regarding the issue.
Thus, a professional intervention at the right time equals success in bringing the customer back and thus customer policy should be constructed around this philosophy. Mc Donald’s in this sense provides full responsibility for its products, the behavior of its employees and managers, the hygiene of its workplaces and most importantly the responsibility to help those who felt that their hard earned money has not bought enough service through whichever means possible. If a customer finds out that his or her burger has not been cooked well, McDonald’s employees know that they should replace it with a proper one.
If the customer is irritated by an individual in the restaurant who poses a threat to others, the McDonald’s security knows how to handle the situation. If a customer is concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, the manager knows how to convince the customer that the restaurant’s kitchen is up to universal hygiene standards. In other words, McDonald’s intends on pleasing its customers by convincing them that every service they get is superior and the employees are trained to prove it for the customer’s satisfaction.
When a customer at a McDonald’s restaurant has a problem with any aspect of the service, he or she is not confronted with a negative attitude, an uncaring approach or a simple “Take it or leave it” mentality but rather finds a helpful employee looking forward for helping the McDonald’s customer. Thus, the McDonald’s employee training program is a very important part of the company’s appeal. McDonald’s not only picks its employees through an exclusive and selective process but also provides them with a training to make sure that they are provided with the skills to cope with possible emergent problems.
In this sense, the company introduces its own policies, procedures and techniques in regards to the business itself but also puts its employees through a psychological training where they are posed with possible problematic scenarios and their responses are demanded. Instead of coming up with a “To-Do List” that every customer needs to follow, McDonald’s provides possible scenarios that require thinking and action on behalf of the employee.
Of course, this does not mean that the company does not have a “To-Do List” or even maybe several of them but rather it means that it asks for its employees’ contribution in a troubled situation for perfection in service.
http://www. aboutmcdonalds. com/mcd/our_company. html [2]http://www. bized. co. uk/compfact/mcdonalds/mc14. htm [3]http://www. brandweek. com/bw/news/recent_display. jsp? vnu_content_id=1003711787 [4]http://www. smartbiz. com/article/articleview/112/1/7/