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Happy Meal Case

The core problem

Happy Meal’ sales are still increasing but with a decreasing growth rate. Even if they give more choices with a healthy food, people keep considering Mac Donald’s as a brand of junk food.
Concerning the Happy Meals, innovations in 2004 were a real success. Nevertheless, such a success has never been achieved since this year, that’s why McDonald wonders how useful innovations are.

SWOT analysis

Strengths:

* Present everywhere in the world thanks to the franchised distribution which improves the creation of new restaurants (more than 31, 000 restaurants in the world) * A major company (a turnover of $22 billion in 2007) * A brand associated with child’s pleasure. This leads to make the parents taking the decision to go to Macdonald’s to spend a good time in family. ( play areas, toys, snacking concept – informal food, less rules than at home- ) * The new design of restaurants, it’s more palatable for customer * An increase in market shares * An improvement of the brand’s image

Happy Meal’s strengths

* Box packaging: paper, colors, printed plays on the packaging * More choices of food (mini fish, potatoes) * A healthier food is proposed (carrot sticks, fruit puree, cherry tomatoes) and it’s realy attractive,(the implemented strategy works) 60% of HM’s are under 585 kcal which proves that families tend to choose healthier HM’s over classic ones.

Weaknesses:

Mac Do:

* Nutritional data of classic menus (in 2003, -7points for “I trust the quality of the ingredients), junk food sticks to the brand * A priori Experience and actual Experience aren’t balanced. There has been a change in the relationship between the consumer and Mac Donald’s: shift from “passion” to “neutral benevolence”

HM’s

* Toy’s quality * The increase of HM’s sales is less and less significant and in 2008 there is a decrease by 4%.