Day 037 - 14 Oct 94 - Page 14
1 McDonald's set about internationalising themselves. It is
2 entitled: "Exporting Americana". I draw your attention,
3 starting from the top, to the third paragraph down:
4 "McDonald's abroad was doing more than pioneering every
5 food service to the middle classes".
6
7 MR. MORRIS: Where are we again?
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Second complete paragraph.
10 A. Second complete paragraph.
11
12 MR. MORRIS: Sorry, read it again.
13 A. If I may, I will read the entire paragraph and then
14 add my comment on to it: "But McDonald's abroad was doing
15 more than pioneering every day food service to the middle
16 classes. It was attempting to export something that was
17 now endemic to American life but totally foreign
18 everywhere else. Quick service food was uniquely
19 American. So were drive-ins and self-service restaurants.
20 And the food it was exporting was as different as were its
21 methods of retailing. Hamburgers, french fries, and milk
22 shakes were an integral part of American culture, but they
23 were not mass marketed in most foreign countries. Indeed,
24 in Japan and other Far Eastern countries, McDonald's was
25 faced not only with the task of introducing the hamburger
26 but with an even more fundamental challenge of
27 establishing beef as a common food. All things
28 considered, the job of going international seemed even
29 more complicated than diversifying" -- they mention
30 diversifying because the previous few pages is what the
31 chief executives of McDonald's have actually been
32 considering previously.
33
34
35 Q. You mean, rather than diversifying its product range?
36 A. Into different businesses completely, using their
37 central expertise of property management and so forth.
38
39 This is something that I would cite as being really the
40 beginning of an unethical approach towards marketing,
41 certainly in this country and McDonald's overseas
42 operations, because what they are doing here is not
43 marketing, in fact, in the traditional sense, because, if
44 you remember, I offered my definition of marketing (which
45 I think you will find is generally acceptable) as the
46 process of satisfying needs and wants. I say "satisfying
47 needs and wants". That is really why the whole discipline
48 of market research has grown up. It is an industry
49 essentially that tries to find out exactly what various
50 consumers and various markets do need and do want. Of
51 course, there is a difference between needs and wants.
52
53 Now, this is not McDonald's approach at all. If you see
54 what McDonald's are actually starting to do here is facing
55 what is described here as a "fundamental challenge of
56 establishing beef as a common food". That is quite
57 interesting, because they are talking about changing
58 cultures, changing an entire culture.
59
60 I would like to develop the story a little bit on page
