Introduction
The McDonald’s restaurant is one of the largest restaurants offering hamburger food .The restaurant is distributed all over 119 countries. It serves approximately 68 million daily. Its main headquarters is in the United States where it started in 1940. It began as a barbecue restaurant and was operated by Richard Maurice and McDonald but in 1948; they reorganize their business and produce only the hamburger using the production principles.
Most McDonald restaurants offer counter services as well as drive-through service with either indoor or outdoor seating. In some countries, “McDrive” near highways do not offer counter service or seating. This is opposite in other countries where locations in high-density city neighborhoods often do not include drive-through service (Iwatate, 123).
The McDonald hamburger became one of the foods eaten by the Japanese people. McDonald restaurant accounts for over 60% of the Japanese marketed hamburger and their sales volume has risen in the whole restaurant industry of Japan (Jitsukawa, 89). The success of the Japan McDonald came due to strategies laid down by the local Japanese market, which include manuals and even the set minimum prices. The Japanese market and the surrounding for example use the manuals and low prices as a strategy to penetrate into the food industry.
The McDonald in Japan has affected the consumers as most of the rich people in Japan go for food in the restaurant. It has grown drastically and has attracted many customers in Japan. This effect is mostly seen among the rich people who go food in the restaurants. This is because most of the food in this restaurant is expensive. The common Japanese man does not get to the restaurant because they cannot afford the food in this restaurant. Other Japanese customers feel that the restaurant is a foreign one and they prefer their domestic restaurant to the McDonald services (Ogawa, 73). However, due to the customers who visit this restaurant, it has grown drastically. At first when the McDonald restaurant entered the Japanese, market in 1971 a few business men thought that the shop could only last for some few days. After some time upon entering the market, the McDonald business in restaurant rose up and it made a lot of money in Japan.
Even though the McDonald originated in USA, after it was accepted in Japan it had to change the production and marketing strategy to suit the Japanese way of doing business. The name changed to ‘makudonarudo,” to sound and appeal to Japanese person. It also adopted the direct management and dropped the American franchise system (Tandon, 157). It has started to produce some other Japanese original food for example Mc Burger, Teriyaki that are now well known in the Japanese market. Most of the Japanese customers consider the McDonald products nothing but snacks. Sharing is a very important part of Japanese meal but one funning thing with hamburgers is that they cannot be shared.
Most of the Japanese don not consider meat as part of the Japanese traditional food .They consider it part of the Western and luxury food. The McDonald introduces a new way to eat, one eats when standing and uses hands to eat but at first, they used chopsticks. The new forms of etiquette become a norm in the public. The McDonald employed most of the Japanese to work in the restaurant who later adopted the new norms. The norms adopted and used in the public are the permanent effects of the McDonald restaurant in Japan.
Works Cited
Iwatate, Marcia. Eat, Work, Shop: New Japanese Design. Singapore: Periplus, 2004. Print.
Jitsukawa, Motoko. Contemporary Japanese Restaurant Design. Singapore: Periplus, 2004. Print.
Massey, Garth. Readings for Sociology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Print.
Ogawa, Ito, and David J. Karashima. The Restaurant of Love Regained. Richmond, [England: Alma Books, 2011. Print.
Tandon, Pooja S. Nutrition Menu Labeling May Lead to Lower Calorie Restaurant Meal Choices for Children. N.p., 2010. Print.
