Marketing

This essay is about an article that appeared on 2014 on the Wall Street Journal, ‘How Taco Bell succeeded by ignoring a marketing taboo’.

Taco bell is a Mexican style fast-food restaurant which serves tacos, burritos, quesadillas, nachos and other specialty foods which are designed for a specific target market. As Taco Bell and McDonald’s have always been big rivals when it comes down to their breakfast menus, Taco Bell adopted an unorthodox marketing approach to gain an advantage and expanding brand awareness; through advertisements that are openly aimed at McDonald’s. Being eager to compete against McDonald’s, Taco Bell is set to fork out a large sum of money for advertisements as part of their marketing scheme (WSJ, 2014). This essay will also further analyze Taco Bell’s marketing strategies – promotion in particular, competitors, characteristic affecting consumer behavior – lifestyles, segmentation, and the implications of future plans and budgets.

“Advertising can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure, and it enables the seller to repeat a message many times” (Kotler and Armstrong, 1991).Taco Bell utilized advertisement as part of its promotion strategy. With Taco Bell aggressively using advertisement on television including a spot that features a real man named Ronald McDonald showing love for Taco Bell, they have gained significant market demand on its breakfast meals and expanded its brand awareness. “The marketing concept, states that to be successful, a company must provide greater customer value and satisfaction than its competitors do” (Kotler and Armstrong 1991). Because McDonald’s is the industry leader at fast-food breakfast with about a 25% market share (usatoday.com, 2014), Taco Bell attempts to overtake McDonald’s.

One opportunity for Taco Bell lies in the healthy eating trend. Taco Bell has appealed to healthy customers with their protein-rich breakfast which includes ‘healthy tacos, cinnamons delights...