Competitive Analysis of McDonald’s and Subway
It is not easy to attract customers inside the restaurants! The restaurants and large food companies are trying several strategies like increasing the variety in their menu, offering discounts, offering healthier options and offering customisation in order to attract customers and build customer loyalty. Speaking of fast food chains, the competition is pretty intense with McDonald’s and Subway holding large market share respectively. Apart from these, the market is fragmented with many other fast food chains. Price-wars, advertising across several mediums, store decor, variety and quick service are some of the factors that affect the competition in fast food industry. In this case, we will analyse the competitive rivalry between McDonald’s and Subway and their relative advantage over each other.
Nowadays, there are several restaurants that are opening worldwide, and many people are getting in to the food business, trying to compete with other famous restaurants. Today, you can find a restaurant on every single block, and each one of them is customizing food in its own way according to the culture and the talent and strategic preference of the owner of the restaurant and company. Actually, some owners of restaurants who migrated from other countries serve their traditional food, and others serve according to the availability. For example, some restaurants just serve pizzas because they just have an oven to prepare it. Also, there are some restaurants that offer products that vary in taste, have variety and are different, they are McDonalds and Subway. McDonald’s and Subway are food chains that concentrate on human desires, and this is the reason why they are being discussed in this case. However, despite their similarities, these restaurants have many differences. Actually, McDonald's and Subway are quite different in their offerings and the way they serve food to their customers and other aspects such as store decoration, theme colour, marketing campaign and store ambience.
Both McDonald's and subway have attractive logos. Both have a loyal set of customers who love their products. Subway's logo has a great tag line, which is "eat healthy". Actually, this idea makes many people who are into healthy eating and fitness, go and dine at Subway. The ‘health’ factor attracts many people towards Subway. For example, I usually eat from subway because I was impressed by its ‘healthy’ menu; this prompted me to dine at Subway. Secondly, Macdonald's logo also has a good tagline which is "I’m lovin’ it". This logo has the word love. Although it is a short word, it has a deep and universal meaning. Actually, it is one of the words that make us feel good about ourselves and others and it makes people to love McDonald’s and dine in it.
Both McDonald's and Subway are focusing on the costumer’s desires and preferences. Actually, both have different kinds of meals so that they can cater to people of all ages and ethnicities. For example, both Subway and McDonald's serve fish, meat and vegetable sandwiches so that everyone can have something from their stores, whether they are vegetarians or non-vegetarians. Moreover, both McDonald's and Subway serve different kinds of breads in order to give the costumer the final choice in choosing the right kind of bread. For example, McDonald's serves croissant and muffin sandwiches for breakfast, while Subway serves Italian, honey, whole wheat, Italian herbs, cheese and flat bread.
McDonald's and Subway enjoy a good reputation all across the world. In fact, both have a huge base of fans and loyal customers. Most of the people in the world are aware about Subway and McDonald's, and they know how well these restaurants serve their offerings to their customers. As a result, these two restaurants have branches in most of the countries of the world. You can also find them in the desert! To illustrate, I found big branches of McDonald's and Subway in Kuwait desert while I was camping over there. I also found McDonald's restaurants in the desert of Saudi Arabia.
The kind of food that is available in these two restaurants is completely different, even though it has the same basic ingredients. Actually, Subway’s food is prepared daily, so it is fresh. Also, the vegetables and meat balls look very clean and fresh. On the other hand, McDonald's food is stored in box, so it is not that fresh and that is a disadvantage for McDonald's because stored food is unhealthy for the body and some ingredients are lost during the storage. Also, there might be a chance that the food has become rotten.
The way of serving meals in Subway and McDonald's is quite different. In McDonald's, there are specific meals that are written in the board from which you can choose from. In Subway, the costumer can craft his/her own meal by choosing the kind of meat, vegetable and the kind of sauce as well. Subway also has specific meals, so that people who do not want order a custom made sandwich can choose specific menu based meals.
One major difference that I noticed between McDonald's and Subway is their store decor. Both McDonald's and Subway have extremely creative decorations. McDonald's decor has an excellent concept. Actually, their decor focuses on highlighting McDonald's funny characters in order to attract children and make them love McDonald's. McDonald's characters can be found on each Mac wall. Also, there is a whole lot of written information on the wall of McDonald's restaurants so that the costumer can gain some knowledge while sitting inside the restaurant. When I was a child, I was convincing my mother to go to McDonald's just to read the information on the wall. On the other hand, Subway's decor is very simple. The walls and tables are green so it makes people feel fresh, active and healthy as well.
The theme colour is one major difference between Subway and McDonald's. McDonald's main colours are red and yellow. Each colour has a great meaning and reaction towards people. The red colour is for grabbing attention. Actually, it reflects the hotness of its meals and the speed of delivery. It reflects the speed of preparing the meal and great nutritional value of the burger. The yellow colour represents freshness and joy, so it makes the costumer feel happy and joyous, therefore he/she will enjoy eating there. Subway's main colour is green and it represents great health, freshness, active life and joy. This makes the customer feel healthy when he or she eats there.
The smell of these two restaurants is also totally different from each other. Actually, Subway's smell is much better than McDonald's. Subway's smell consists of freshly prepared sandwiches, but McDonald's smell consists of French fries and corn fat. It makes you feel that the food is not fresh and is unhealthy. Also, the smell of Subway’s fresh bread makes you feel that Subway serves fresh and good food and it increasing my craving to dine at Subway!
Conclusion
Today, there is no doubt that Subway and McDonald’s have become one of the biggest players in the restaurant/fast food business. Speaking of McDonald’s, the popularity of its slogan “I’m lovin’ it” has translated clearly and effectively to every language and culture and has caught the attention of the customers in the U.S, which was McDonald’s biggest consumer market. If you ask anyone in U.S. or any other country about the origin of “I’m lovin’ it”, they would reply with “McDonald’s”.
However, biggest threat to McDonald’s is the ‘unhealthy’ image because of the rise of obesity in U.S and other countries due to which the firm even faced lawsuits from some of its past customers. McDonald’s needs to improve on its ‘unhealthy’ image if it wants to compete with ‘Subway’, which surpassed McDonald’s as the fast food chain with the most U.S. outlets in 2001.
Subway has more outlets than McDonald’s and its strength lies in its ‘healthy’ image. However, it is far behind McDonald’s in terms of overall sales. The outlet needs to stick to its competitive advantage and keep on serving its customers. Who knows, in future, it might even beat McDonald’s in sales!
