Abstract

The world’s largest restaurant chain, the US-based McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald’s), started its digital initiatives in 2002. The digitization evolved slowly and went on to become a part of the company’s corporate strategy. McDonald’s wanted to connect with customers digitally and in 2017, it started using data and analytics to do so. In 2020, it came up with a strategy called ‘Accelerate the Arches’ to steer it ahead for the next few years. In the new strategy, digital experience was given a prominent position. McDonald’s had gathered a huge amount of data about customers right from the time it started accepting credit cards in 2002. Through the digitization initiatives, it gathered more and more data about its customers, and used it to get meaningful insights about their habits and create products and offerings to meet their needs. With McDonald’s taking its technology push ahead, it was looking at personalizing offers to cater to customers from different segments. As a result, the digital sales accounted for about 30% of the company’s total sales. With the company taking its digitalization ahead by introducing more personalization initiatives, the returns were only expected to increase further.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand how digitalization enables an organization to improve its operational efficiency, sales, and customer experience
• Study the changes brought about by digitalization
• Analyze the Digital Transformation Framework
• Understand Mass Personalization and how organizations benefit from it

Keywords

McDonald’s; Digitalization; Digital Transformation; Digital Transformation Network; Mass Marketing; Mass Personalization; Digital Technologies; Digital Strategy; Customer Experience; Transforming Business Model; Metaverse; Customer Experience; Transforming Operational Process