Competition is Fierce
McDonald’s is an American company in the fast food service
industry that was founded in 1940. Its current headquarters are in Oak Brook,
Illinois. The company owns and operates a chain of restaurants in addition to
30,000 franchises located in 199 countries found all over the globe and serving
millions of customers on a daily basis (Peng, 2013). McDonald's menu comprises
of hamburgers, cheeseburgers and French fries in addition to chicken products
and soft drinks, desserts, wraps, milkshakes and foods for breakfast. The
company, however, makes the effort to produce their menu items locally and at a
set standard to maintain quality and increase the products relevancy to the
local community. The quality of McDonald’s services is also enhanced by the use
of e-commerce through the utilization of technological developments such as the
McDonald’s website for marketing products (Dorfman, 2014). Secondly, the use of
online service for placing orders, delivery, and advertising on Facebook and
Instagram and the automation of its business activities. McDonald's also uses
menu display on a television screen and free Wi-Fi to customers as a rebrand of
its business operations and increase its competitive advantage.
Starbucks is also a company in the food industry offering coffee
and running various coffee shops in the US and around the world (Gilbert,
2008). Through E-commerce, Starbucks pioneered the digitization of the food
service industry through the use of pre-loaded loyalty card and order-ahead app
that has helped revitalize the in-store experience and enable easy shipping of
goods up to the customers’ houses (Lindner, 2017). However, Starbuck recently
closed down its online store as a move to simplify its sales. This endeavor
leaves Starbucks dependent on direct sales from the stores.
From this analysis, McDonald's sales and business operations are
fully automated in contrast to Starbucks business operations. In my view thus,
considering factors such as competition, customer service, and diversification
of product helps determine effective use of e-commerce technology. In this
regard, McDonald's has effectively utilized the e-commerce technologies better
than Starbucks.
References
Dorfman, J. H. (2014) Economics and Management of the Food
Industry. Routledge.
Gilbert, S. (2008) The Story of Starbucks. The Creative
Company.
Lindner, M. Starbucks will shutter its e‑commerce site to focus on
its mobile app and stores. Digital
Commerce 360. Retrieved from https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2017/08/31/starbucks-shutter-e-commerce-site-
focus-mobile-app-stores/
Peng, M. W. (2013) Global Strategy. Cengage Learning.
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