SWOT Analysis

McDonald's 

 

 The birth of McDonald's began with Raymond Albert Kroc.

Ray Kroc was the exclusive distributor of a milk shake maker called the Multimixer. Meanwhile, two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald owned and ran a hamburger restaurant in San Bernadino, California, in the 1950s. Ray Kroc heard how well the McDonald brothers were doing using his Multimixers to serve their customers. He met up with them and acquired the franchising right from them to run McDonald's restaurants.

 In 1955, Ray Kroc founded the McDonald's Corporation and opened the first restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. In 1961, he bought out the McDonald brothers. Now, McDonald's is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 68 million customer daily in 119 countries. Whilst in Brunei, the first was opened only on 15 December 1992.

Strengths

What does the company do well?
Is the company strong in its market?

Does well in serving/providing it's customers. And yes it is strong being the only one in Brunei. It is at a strategic location too, one of the centre in the country. In some way, McDonald's overshadows some of the local businesses.

This was in the papers, today. Well done McDonald's!

You can copy then right click and choose 'open link', I haven't got the brains on how to link it directly yet.

http://www.bt.com.bn/happenings/2012/04/25/mcds-rewards-top-crew-member

Weakness

What does the company do poorly?
What problems could be avoided?

Being the only one in Brunei is also its weakness. Because anybody who wants to get something from there have no any other option, no other outlet to go to. Thus long queue, also because of minimum counters. It is not a 24 hours operated so maybe they can push the opening hours abit more if 24 hours can't be done. I've mentioned their strategic location, just not that it is located at the most busiest centre in the country. I have no hesitation in saying that they can start thinking moving to a more strategic building to expand their outlet where drive through can be provided for people who doesn't have time to search for parking space. Get more workers and open more counters. Before I forget, ever since it's opening I never remembered the restaurant being renovated. Management needs to work on upgrading their looks to lure more customers and to upgrade their system. It's a shame if foreigners/visitor were to go there, and compare it with their's because we only have one outlet yet it can't be maintained properly.

Here are some feedbacks I got from searching the net regarding about Brunei's McDonald's,

"Brunei has only one outlet at the most busiest centre, therefore hard to look for a parking spot if you wanna eat there",

 "The place is scruffy, not been updated for years and looks incredibly run-down. McDonald's should spend money on it",

"The queues!! Especially during peak hours my god... its like going to the bank on payday!"

Opportunities

Do new markets exist for the company?
Can new technologies be exploited?

Yes, it does exist. They can try using e-business with creating a website. And with creating a website, they would need a service provider to install putting up the website. So the service providers are the new market for this business. Providing wireless is another one, both for new markets and new technologies.With installing wireless, customers can bring in their laptop to do work or just to surf the internet while dining in. And like I've mentioned above, e-business. Make a website so customers would know what their menus are, what to expect to be served from McDonald's. Promotions and all. And maybe order through online, then either to be delivered or it'd be ready for pick up so there wouldn’t be long queue. Another thing for these two questions, McDonald's can try thinking about getting installers for upgrading their cashier register. Use digital computerized cash register so all their data base can be kept there, makes it faster and easier rather than the register they're using at the moment.

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to this.

Threats

What are the competitors doing well?
Are there changes in the business environment?

Competitors are doing well because they have more than one outlet. They can provide more service from receiving more customers. Sometimes it's cheaper too. Perfect examples would be AyamKu, KFC, Jollibee. An outlet of the competitor's can communicate with their other outlet if there was something that a customer want but isn't available in the current outlet. Regarding about changes in the business environment, I can't really say much. So far nothing has come to my attention that can actually make me compare. I'll do more research on that and will update again once I'm done with it.

Conclusion: