Burger King Marketing Analysis

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Burger King’s core competency is fast food restaurant franchises specializing in made to order, flame-broiled hamburger sandwiches, particularly the “Whopper”. Using the strategy of industrial organization to capture market share Burger King offers a similar product (hamburgers) in a different way (flame-broiled). This strategy of product differentiation is part of the firm conduct category that Burger King uses to set itself apart from its competitors. In order to compete with its fast food competitors Burger King accentuates its core competencies in its marketing and product strategies, thereby leveraging market share.

Burger King uses a dispersed configuration for day to day operations as the majority of their restaurants are franchises with local suppliers. Yet Burger King Headquarters uses a concentrated configuration for marketing and development of products, as well as pricing. This centralization of marketing assists all franchises worldwide and provides the greatest value for the company, but the direction of available products and pricing has proven detrimental to the overall success of the firm. An article on CNNMoney.com describes the failure of the $1 double cheese burger to stimulate sales and how a number of franchisees filed lawsuits against the headquarters due to being forced to sell the double cheese burger at less than cost in order to boost revenues for the headquarters and shareholders and not the franchisees.

By choosing to expand into markets later than other fast food restaurants Burger King hopes to avoid the problems of developing infrastructure and establishing a market base. For instance, by following McDonalds into Brazil, Burger King avoided the need to develop the infrastructure and mark...

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...://money.cnn.com/2010/09/03/news/companies/burger_king_buyout.fortune/index.htm

Chakravarty, C. (2007). Burger King Likely to Adopt Franchise Model in India. The Economic Times, retrieved from: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-01- 05/news/28458380_1_burger-king-restaurants-key-franchisees

Associated Press. (2011). Burger King falls to 1Q loss, sales drop 8 percent. Retrieved from: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Burger-King-falls-to-1Q-loss-apf-2850409674.html?x=0&.v=1.

Christine, B. (2001). Burger King Webidodes aim for Whopper of Laughs. Direct Marketing News, retrieved from: http://www.dmnews.com/burger-king-webisodes-aim-for-whopper-of-laughs/article/73082/.

Daniels, J. D., Radebaugh, L. H., and Sullivan, D. P., (2011). International Business: Environments and Operations. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

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