Fast Food Chains' Marketing Strategy (Essay Sample)

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Fast Food Chains’ Marketing Strategy
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OVERVIEW
Fast foods increased profits and marketability over the years. The primary focus of fast food chains is the children. Advertising and other marketing strategies have been successfully employed, thus fast food restaurants have grown into a multi-billion dollar business. On the contrary, with the expansion of fast food chains, there exist some negative influences particularly among children. Fast food chains have associated with diabetes, obesity, and other illnesses. This paper presents various forms of marketing strategies that fast foods used to increase revenues.
INTRODUCTION
The fast food business is considered as the catalyst in the increasing rate of obesity across the world (Schlosser 2002). Obesity is manifested due to the high caloric content as well as fats present in foods such as burgers and fries.
People purchase fast foods without being aware of the negative impacts of the foods they buy. Seldom do people ever consider the source of the foods they consume and the manner of producing them. Schlosser emphasizes the harmful content of fast foods.
The top three food chains in the United States are: McDonalds with $34.2 billion USD sales in 2011 and has 14,098 locations; Subway with $11.4 billion USD sales in 2011 and has 24,722 locations; Starbucks with $9.75 billion USD sales in 2011 and has 10, 787 locations (McConnell and Bhasin 2012).
Marketing Strategies
Fast food chains such as McDonalds have incorporated the tastes, the toys, the play equipment, and other services that are really appealing to kids. These are the most common reasons for McDonalds’ immeasurable success.
McDonalds’ French fries is the most grabbed item in the counter. Customers, food critics, and even competitors are all-praises when it comes to the taste of fries. There really is something with the taste that makes the McDonalds’ fries stand out from the rest. For instance, both McDonalds and Russet Burbanks purchase their potatoes from the same company. They also make use of the same equipment. Yet the taste of fries from the two fast food chains varies. It was found out that the taste of fast food fries is determined by the oil used. For many years now, McDonalds’ fries are cooked in a 7% cotton seed oil mixed with 93% beef tallow. Due to the outrage and criticisms obtained by the company because of the high caloric content of fries, McDonalds’ had to change their oil to pure vegetable. This gave McDonalds’ a big challenge to overcome. Time was spent on how to cook the fries and have the same flavor as they had when the company was still using cotton seed oil. With the new fries now, the taste is never different from that which the fries before had.
Fast food chains maintain secrecy in their food flavor. None of them would ever want to share the formula. Fast food chains would like to make customers believe that the flavor of their foods is their unique creation and does not come from the initiative of companies from other countries.
Fast food chains also make use of food coloring to make the foods look attractive to the customers. Incongruously, color is the "cookie cutter" monotony of a number of places, for instance fast food chains, where color is used most sensibly. The inflexible design standards and determination for fast revenue permit for a dynamic color palette that functions from one outlet to the next. Thus, it is no surprise why at McDonalds, sundaes are very enticing. Sundaes come in different colors depending on the flavor that one chooses. Nonetheless, there is a deeper and more significant reason why sundaes are appealing – the taste. Sundaes are very sweet, tasty, and cool. Physiologically speaking, the human brain has a center for sweet foods that make them really addictive. Sugar triggers the release of dopamine and opioids. Dopamine tends to initiate food seeking while opioids can prolong the meal. Sugar and other stimulating addictions increase dopamine in the short term. The only problem is it appears that those with sugar addictions and compulsive eating. Chocolate sundaes are also addictive. Chocolate stimulates the brain's opioid production. Opioids are chemicals responsible for diminishing pain sensations, enhancing pleasurable ones, and creating a sense of overall well-being. Increased opioids raise the brain's levels of dopamine, believed to trigger the "reward response." Within the mid-brain is a neural network connecting to the nucleus which generates ...