Great tasting food at McDonalds? Healthy food at McDonalds. Food like you like it at McDonalds? Since McDonalds already owns speed of service/convenience, customers won’t give them any of these attributes and benefits. This is good news for competitors, if they’re willing to accept the resulting smaller market of customers to whom these things are important.
From an outsider’s perspective, McDonalds competitors’ best marketing efforts have been when they distinguished themselves from McDonalds. If you don’t want catsup on your hamburger, it’ll be a problem at McDonalds. You’ll order, move to the side and wait … and wait … and wait. For you, McDonalds has lost its benefit of speed of service/convenience.
In the 1970’s Burger King, the number two U.S. hamburger chain, exploited this weakness in McDonalds’ positioning. The campaign was often lampooned, but nevertheless extremely effective. The jingle lyrics were “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don't upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way!” Burger King became the brand for those consumers who wanted a hamburger that was customized to their taste rather than the standardized McDonalds burger.
Wendy’s, the number three U.S. hamburger chain, has attempted to distinguish itself from McDonalds with their “Fresh. Never Frozen.” product claims. In my opinion, the problem with this approach is that it is indirect. The real product benefit is that fresh meat will produce a hamburger which is “Hot n’ Juicy.” It’s a safe assumption that hamburger consumers want hot and juicy hamburgers; however, I’m not so sure that hamburger consumers are interested in the healthy connotations of “fresh”. In my opinion, they have reversed the product benefit and the product benefit support. To appeal to the hamburger consumer, the claim should read, “Hot n’ Juicy because they’re made from fresh, not frozen, meat,” rather than “Fresh, Never Frozen so that we’ll have Hot n’ Juicy hamburgers.”
The number four hamburger chain in the U.S. is Hardee’s which has stores located primarily in the South and Midwest. While the trend in American eating habits is toward fresher and healthier foods, there must be some segment in the fast food market which isn’t interested in fresher and healthier. I would assume that this segment is composed primarily of young males whose high metabolism rapidly burn calories and whose elevated hormone levels make them feel that they are going to live forever. For this target segment, Hardee’s seems to be attempting to position itself as the brand of choice. Additions to their menu include the Monster Thickburger which consists of two one-third-pound slabs of Angus beef, four strips of bacon, three slices of cheese, and mayonnaise on a buttered sesame seed bun. With 1,420 calories and 107 grams of fat, the target consumers for this product should have high metabolism and believe that they will live forever.
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