...A Happy Meal for the Mind When I was a little girl I always thought it was a treat to visit McDonalds. This magical place had a giant play-place, ice cream, French fries and of course that special surprise toy contained inside the happy meal. What else could I have wanted? This world lost all of its glamour however, when I became a teen who experienced the inner workings of this land from the side of employment. I will never forget the place that was to be my first experience of the working world. My Fifteenth birthday had just passed and this meant I was finally old enough to enter the work force. So I went to the only place in the area that would hire a kid without experience or a driver’s license, McDonalds. Now, I wasn't entirely thrilled about the idea of working in this environment but if I wanted to get a car in the next year it was off to work for me. Somewhat sullenly, I donned my uniformed baseball cap and made my way behind the service counter. Feeling a little nervous, I fumbled as I attempted to tie my apron behind my back. I began to wonder what I might be assigned to do first. "Well, as long as I can work behind the scenes and avoid talking to people I should be okay." I thought. Standing motionless, I observed the fast-food frenzied scene. Employees were running here and there yelling to one another, order screens were flashing, various machines were buzzing...
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...1.Discuss how the two cases in this chapter illustrate the major theme of this text: changes in the macro environment affect individual firms and industries through the microeconomic factors of demand, production, cost and profitability. Drawing on current business publications, find some updated facts for each case that support this theme. Both the cases McDonald’s in China and Wal-Mart in Mexico show how the interplay of microeconomic and macroeconomic factors influences managers’ competitive strategies. For both of these company, expansion abroad was a strategic move that helped offset slowing in the United States. However, both cases show how companies had to understand consumer behavior in these countries and the nature of competition from both local and international sources. is prevalent that several changes in the macro environment have had an effect on the profitability of individual firms and industries. The text states that downturns in economic activity forced all the fast-food companies to develop new strategies. During this economic downturn McDonald’s was one company in particular that has developed strategies that were influenced by microeconomic changes. A great example is when McDonald’s entered the Chinese market they had to take into consideration consumer taste and acceptance in China. They had to decided whether or not to have the menu in Chinese or English and whether or not to take on the American menu or add more Chinese influenced menu items. Cost...
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...obesity. Moreover, obese children have a much higher risk of many health problems such as coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain cancers--all of which are fatal if left untreated. In 2010, a mother from California sued McDonald’s over the company’s marketing practice of Happy Meal. The mother claimed that McDonald’s used alluring toys to lure kids into Happy Meal. This lawsuit, which might be viewed by many as senseless and absurd, was one of McDonald’s biggest cases. In order to come out of the lawsuit ahead, this largest fast food chain had to undergo some major organizational changes. In this paper, we would like to use the knowledge learned in the class to analyze the event (the lawsuit) and its effects on McDonald’s. The paper will have four main parts. In the first part, we provide a brief introduction of the company, McDonald’s, and the lawsuit. In the second part, we will use the concepts learned in class to analyze Happy Meal’s influencing strategies and the organizational changes during and after the suit. We believe that Happy Meal’s influencing strategies deserve our attention as they were the main causes of the crisis. Since its Happy Meal’s influencing...
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...Should We Restrict Marketing to Children? Kelli Zimmerman-Klemp November 25, 2013 Ethics and Decisions Should We Restrict Marketing to Children? This issue of whether or not advertising aimed at children should be restricted is a strange one to me. When presented with the issue, my first thought was, “Assuming, of course, that the advertising is truthful (which, if it’s not, is a problem unrelated to whom its target audience is), why would we need to restrict advertising to children?” Thinking about it a bit, I was unable to think of a reason why it would be wrong to market to kids. Picking up Taking Sides Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society (Newton, Englehardt, & Pritchard), I was eager to learn why such advertising might be harmful, and thus, unethical, for children. In reading the introduction to the debate, I was reminded that “children do not have the fully developed cognitive skills necessary for making…an informed decision” (Newton et al., p. 256). I had a feeling this last sentence would play a role in the argument against marketing to children. Stop the Presses I began with Stephanie Clifford’s 2010 article from The New York Times, “A Fine Line When Ads and Children Mix” (Newton et al., p.258). Clifford specifically addresses advertising in magazines aimed at children. The Children’s Advertising Review Unit, an arm of the Council of Better Business Bureaus set up by the National Advertising Review Counsel (asrcreviews.org), has been set up...
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...reduce the price of its new products to the diversity of the products by implementing new line in the menu. McDonald’s should price them relatively to its sandwiches’ price. Because it may result that consumers would not have to hesitant between cheap burger meal and expensive healthy meal. Customers will rather go for healthy meal if the prices differences are approximately small. Although the launching of the new products of the company is not doing well, McDonald’s still wants to maintain selling the healthy products such as fruits, salads, and vegetables as well as fruit juice especially for kids. Because McDonald’s knows that child is one the major consumers in their business strategy, and therefore, they come out with healthy food which can attract their parents’ minds, as the children would consume whatever if their parents would allow them to. If parents found that there are fruits and vegetables in the Happy Meal box, without any consideration, they would go for it. Besides McDonald’s supports sport, the company is sponsoring a lot of sport event such as football and tennis. As nowadays, children are influenced by athletes like David Beckham and Michael Jordon. Therefore, McDonald’s now is implementing the Happy Meals with some sport related gadgets, which is aim to attract children’ attention on their role model of players in gadgets. McDonald’s has made a big efforts with their best possibility means to offer the consumers an assorted range of products against the issues...
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...very similar to the new product lines. It will be very important to reach the health conscious consumer. To promote health, each oatmeal package will include a sticker coupon good for $1.00 off the price of the Carrot-Orange Smoothie. The coupon will have an expiration date two weeks from the date of purchase. This markets to the health conscious consumer that prefers oatmeal over a biscuit, therefore they will most likely prefer the veggie smoothie over an ice cream treat. This marketing strategy will continue at McDonald’s 60 days after the introduction of the veggie smoothie, allowing time for all to enjoy several before they are charged full price. McDonald’s has been in the news heavily regarding the toys in their Happy Meals for children. A lawsuit filed on behalf of a...
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...NARRATION: Now it is around 8pm. Here comes a garbage man walking into the restaurant. Look, he starts to collect the leftover, includes the food which the two woman wasted. Seems like he is so happy when he is distributing the leftover into the plastic bag and rubbish dump. SCENE: NARRATION: After a long night, he finally finishes his work. Let’s follow him and discover what he will deal with the leftover. Now, here is the village. Look, there are so many children run towards him. They smiles happily when they saw him. They then quickly help him to take the rubbish dump and open it. They are enjoying to eat those leftover and I could also feel their happiness and satisfaction. The leftover inside the plastic bag is mostly bones and they use it to feed the animals. SCENE: NARRATION: Let’s follow again to the man, he goes back home and passes the food to his family. The woman was pregnant, and other children are sitting beside. The woman distributes the leftover to her children. Feel that she is a great mother as she only take care of the young ones. She just stand aside, quietly looking at her children eating. At same time, the father also teaches them the dining etiquette before the children start to have their dinner. They learn from their father that we need to appreciate every meal we have and pray for the good we had. SCENE:...
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...couldn't purchase a school lunch that was appealing to him. There is a fine line in feeding children healthy choices and just being completely cheap, the price that a parent pays for a tray of school lunch should reflect the meal on the tray. Hayden's cafeteria tray lunch costs $1.90 each day if he doesn't bring a sack lunch from home. That is in comparison twenty four cents cheaper than a small fry and small chicken nugget at Wendy's. Of course the veggies a more healthy choice, although the price comparison shows the public school system is saving money by providing the cheapest choice on the tray and not becoming in touch with students likes as well as what has nutrient value and taste good as well. Chicken has a lot of protein and maybe a choice like corn, green bean fries, or sweet potato wedges would help children eat enough to learn efficiently. There is a fine line in feeding kids healthy choices and being completely cheap. Corn, bananas, apples, and oranges all as healthy as carrots, but not as cheap. For some reason related to childhood obesity our school age children could probably go hungry because they do not have enough time to eat their poorly chosen meals. One meal a day is what most children eat at school and in only twenty minutes can't be the sole cause of children becoming overweight. More activity throughout the day, a wider variety of food choices and thirty minute eating breaks can lead to quality educational...
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...Dinners Are Significant For those interested in improving their family’s interpersonal relationship and overall health, say, “goodbye” to take out food and “hello” to home-cooked family dinners. In this modern age and technologically advanced century, people rarely eat at home with their families. In America, many parents work long hours in which it becomes challenging for them to cook home- meals and eat together with their children. Therefore, many families resort to ordering takeout food. For many American families, it is hard to schedule family dinners for reasons that might be because sometimes parents work overtime, or children have some social activities. However, if members of a family put effort to gather for dinner, studies have shown its possible positive effects for family members. Many family meals give a family a chance to talk about happenings of the day, laugh, make family decisions, and enjoy the food in a tide in manner. Moreover, family dinners can help family members to learn about each other and build better interpersonal relationships. Regular family meals with family have been shown to lower a high-risk teenage behavior, such as sexual activity, drinking alcohol, smoking, marijuana use, eating disorders, violence, and school problems. In addition, family dinners have shown to decrease the risk of child obesity, improve a child’s social skills, and reduce behavioral issues in children. Although family dinners can be time consuming, inconvenient, and...
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...fat due to school? When it comes to school lunches most kids eat hot lunch. The lunch ladies get paid so they are happy, and kids get lunch so they are happy to! It’s the kind of lunch that they are serving is the issue. Should we change school lunches or keep serving students preserved, artificial food? The lunch schools serve now is frozen and warmed up, or just plain unhealthy. More than half of the kids that go to school go home and eat nothing but junk food, so if they come to school and eat an unhealthy lunch then it's junk food all day and they don't get any nutrition. Schools don’t have a lot of extra money to change their whole lunch menus but neither do all family’s. Some families don't have money to buy healthy food because junk food is cheaper. If schools provide healthy lunches and took away most junk food there would be so many improvements in so many ways....
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...Most students are complaining about healthy lunch at school. It is a fact, nine out of ten students surveyed don't like the school lunch, when in fact they should. This year is a mush healthier lunch in cafeteria. There are vegetables and you have fat free milk also. I have some ideas how students can live a healthy life by eating healthy, avoiding fast food, and try to make a limit. First, healthy means having or indicating good health in your body, and being healthy is better way to live your life. If students will eat healty they would be able to do or achieve anything in his/her own way. In body person could be strong and healthy. They will have positive thoughts and not negative thoughts. Second, students should eat healthy and...
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...she expressed was brought a smile to my face and made me happy to think I used to be the same way whenever I visited McDonalds as a child. I must admit that it was very difficult for me to come up with ten service quality improvements for McDonalds because of the wonderful times I’ve experienced in the past and the one I was creating for my niece. I presented the question of service quality to my friends and family to get their insight on the topic. The main topics they mentioned were all centered on healthy choices, technology, and basic level customer service at all locations. Discussing this topic with them really got me to thinking and I was able to create a check list to assist McDonalds with enhancing their current service quality efforts. 1. Menu Choices – A wider selection of well balanced, nutritious meals for the health conscious consumers. 2. Having it my way by allowing customers create their own value meals. Customers have a better gage on what they think is of value to them, so provide an option of making your own value meal. 3. Kid’s meals- Offering more choices for kids that are have more nutritional value. 4. Reasonable wait times in both the lobby and drive-thru and making the food match the wait time. This basically means the food was worth the wait. 5. Interactive menus in the drive-thru & walk-up lobby allowing customers to input their own orders. 6. Providing the basic condiments and other meal accessories like napkins, forks, straws, and spoons without...
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...In our school district, the principal of Northern Middle School allowed all of the middle school students to leave school to go get lunch. The lunch period would still be an hour, but the school system thinks that it's a good idea to provide 40 minutes of lunch due to traffic or the wait times of restaurants. The extra 40 minutes would provide us with having more time to eat what we want and we wouldn't have to be worried about being late back to school. I think being able to go get lunch out of school is a great idea, especially if you forgot your lunch at home and you would never eat cafeteria food. Having this system in our would be good news to the students that are very allergic to most of the school cafeteria food sold at school. This...
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...holidays. You could say my family has created folkways for our holiday meals governing the “when and what to eat” -- concept. Folkways are defined by Joan Ferrante, as norms that apply to the mundane aspects or details of daily life (Ferrante 50). My family has developed many folkways around the holidays, so much so that if anyone tries to change them up it disrupts the norm of the holiday for us. The traditional family does everything by the book as far as preparing holiday meals but sometimes changes up the menu. In my family, we are so set in our way that if something is missing, it can cause drama and make for grumpy family members. My family has developed many folkways that are centered on the foods we eat for certain holiday meals, such as 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The typical 4th of July meal that my family prepares is barbequed hamburgers, hot dogs, potato and/or pasta salads, chips, dips, and fruit, usually cantaloupe and watermelon. Thanksgiving dinner consists of turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy and all the other traditional Thanksgiving dishes. Christmas dinner is usually prime rib, baked potatoes, salad and all things that go along with a prime rib dinner. Our most traditional Christmas meal is prime rib, and it would be really strange if that was not on the table. Since my family is big on the traditional food items that go with certain meals, it is noticed when a food dish that we usually have is not present on...
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...Market Analysis A restaurant (/ˈrɛstərənt/ is a business which prepares and serves food and drinks to customers in exchange for money, either paid before the meal, after the meal, or with an open account. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of the main chef's cuisines and service models. One can never stopped Cagayan de Oro from progressing. Food establishments became rampant in Cagayan de Oro because of the great demand of Kagay-anons. With so many Kagay-anons who love eat delicious and mouth-watering foods; the team can really say that investors can capture big opportunities and would really want to invest in food businesses. Based on research for Region X, there are around 240 food restaurants registered in Cagayan de Oro City. As the team conduct the research about food restaurants specifically Barkadahan Grill, the new emerging company which is considered as the top competitor of Barkdahan Grill, Roy’s Bistro is very well-known to almost everyone. How did Roy’s won the heart of Kagay-anons? It offers affordable and tasty food options to its patrons which resulted to excellent reviews in the local scene. The store opens at 6am with their breakfast offering for only Php69, customers can already enjoy eating their breakfast. In addition to, break hours wouldn’t be a problem as the company is...
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