PESTEL analysis of McDonalds

McDonald is the largest fast food company in the world. There are more than 30,000 restaurants in over 120 countries worldwide. In reality, there is nearly 49 million customers daily buy food from McDonald. The reasons of success for McDonalds are not only about delicious fast food, but also the theory, strategy that it used. In this post, I will mainly focus on the analysis of macro environment for McDonalds, which is using the tool called PESTEL analysis

Political Factors

Generally, McDonalds are affected by government policy on the regulations of Fast Food Company such as health and hygiene policy. Government realized health problem have been a big concern for everyone, people are having diseases such as cardiovascular and cholesterol because they are eating too much fast food. Furthermore, hygiene policy also is a big concern for a fast food company. Good relationship with government will bring McDonald on a better position to service in this industry

A Map Of Every McDonald's In The U.S.

Economic Factors

McDonalds have to consider the effect of economic. Organisational performance is usually affected economic factors such as tax rate, exchange rate and unemployment rate. Running a Business in local market, a company must be facing government regulation on tax or profit. Especially McDonald is an international company, and its business is successfully running over the world. Every country also has its own regulation on tax or other else that affect the business. Moreover, McDonald needs to import food and drink in local market, which mean the exchange rate and people living standard also affect the cost of running a business and productivity.

Socio-Cultural Factors

The changing lifestyle will affect the sales performance of McDonalds. Nowadays, people are willing to eat more expensively. They want to have quality services and food more than fast food. Moreover, different country has different eating behaviour. In western country such as USA, people are willing to eat potato and hamburger. But in China, people prefer rice more than hamburger and potato. Few years ago, McDonald promoted rice burger, and now is promoting rice for dinner. For my point of view, it is really strange and hardly to say it is delicious.

Technological Factor

In Fast food industry, technology seems not affect so much to the company. However, high technology will help organisation improve its management and performance of productivity. Technology is used in so many ways, for instance, advertising on internet, providing easy payment for the sales service, providing Wifi and internet devices to satisfy the needs of customers.

Environment Factor

Recently, people start concern environmental problems such as air pollution and too much waste of row material. Take McDonald as example, it faced a lot of criticize of the waste production. Before the pager packaging was produced, McDonalds were using polystyrene for packaging for foods. As I mentioned at the beginning, there are around 49 million customers daily buy the food from McDonald. Can you imagine how much food waste and the waste of polystyrene package are produced? There are some pressure groups against McDonald as the largest waste fast food company and it is a company that killing animals. McDonald should base on environment factors to change its strategy. 

Legal Factors

Regulation always is the biggest concern to a company. As a company in fast industry, there are many legal requirements that McDonald should achieve in different countries, such as the labour and employment law, company law and tax requirement.

In conclusion, McDonald is still facing different threat from the macro environment. McDonald will be affected by each of the factors.