Day 257 - 06 Jun 96 - Page 39
1 A. That is correct, yes.
2
3 Q. The average number of visits a year is what you look at to
4 see what the make-up of your custom is?
5 A. Yes.
6
7 Q. But you are not actually trying to find an accurate figure,
8 of the kind we are searching for in this case, how often
9 people actually do visit, all you want is some basic
10 material to see where your marketing should go next?
11 A. That is correct.
12
13 Q. Is that right?
14 A. That is correct, yes.
15
16 Q. It does not necessarily matter whether it is very accurate
17 as long as it gives you some indication?
18 A. Yes, that is indeed correct. It is the kind of number
19 that we would use to calculate the number of tray liners or
20 the number of cups we need in a year, or the number of
21 whatever. It is data from our internal till system that we
22 would use for exactly the reasons you have given.
23
24 Q. If we look at page 3, whatever it does mean what you really
25 want to know is that 16 to 24 year olds visit one and a
26 fifth times as often as 45 to 64 year olds?
27 A. That is correct, yes.
28
29 Q. Even that surprises me, but there we are.
30 A. The previous assertion that the typical or average
31 McDonald's customer visits between somewhere between 19 and
32 30 times a year is indeed correct, and that is the kind of
33 assumption we would not use in an assumption much more
34 accurate than that to plan the business upon because it is
35 hard to be certain about any calculation in this sense
36 because it is all upon assumption based upon a small
37 sample, whether it is our existing till system or whether
38 it is a research source you are never going to interview,
39 you know, 650 million people, you are going to interview
40 'X' number of million people.
41
42 MS. STEEL: The 650 million figure is the figure that comes from
43 your tills?
44 A. It is partially-----
45
46 Q. So it might be thought to be the most accurate figure?
47 A. No, that figure is derived from the number of
48 -- I think at the time, transactions going through our
49 tills in a year was about 250 million, and it was
50 multiplying that number by, I think, between abut 2.5 and
51 2.7 to get to 650 million. The 2.5 or 2.7 would come from
52 various research sources. AF2 would be one of them.
53 Another one that is not here is a piece of research we call
54 a trading area survey, which is something that picks up
55 people's usage patterns around our restaurants.
56
57 Q. It might also come from the till information where you can
58 tell, for example, one transaction includes two drinks or 3
59 drinks and 3 burgers or 3 burgers?
60 A. We can break down numbers of, as you say, items by
