Competitiveness

McDonald’s have a very specific set of competitive advantages that they are trying to attain. McDonald’s maintain their competitive advantage through product development strategy, they develop the ingredients and packaging of their products to make it look more attractive to the public. They have 20 variations of burger to gain competitive advantage. They use temporary product strategy, wherein they are trying to develop old products or trying to innovate new ones. An example of this would be, since they are in an Arab country, they innovated and introduced a new product which is McArabia, and other competitors doesn’t vary their products according to demography/ geography. Another example would be, they try to develop/ improve their products, McChicken is an existing product of McDonald’s and they have improved it and introduced a spicy version of it. In addition, McDonald’s regularly develops temporary products. McWings, for example, is a product that is offered only seasonally, wherein every time it is offered, people would instantly buy the product, because it’s one of the most awaited seasonal product of McDonald’s. Another example would be the Strawberry custard version of apple pie, people can’t barely wait for it to be offered in the market again. The purpose of this product development strategy is to give customers something new to experience on each visit and to experiment with new items that may become permanent. With this strategic planning, they gain and maintain their competitive advantage in the market and other companies cannot beat the strategy that they are using towards the mass.