McDonald's Ray Kroc opened the first Mcdonald's restaurant in Illinois, America in 1955. Today Mcdonald's is one of the world's leading food service brands with more than 36 000 restaurants in more than 100 countries. McDonald's opened its first restaurant in South Africa in November 1995. Today it operates over 200 restaurants in South Africa. It serves over 8 million customers per month and employs over 8 000 employees. South Africa is one of the most successful markets in the franchise's international history. McDonald's is renowned for its training throughout the world. South African crew members receive comprehensive training in restaurants across the country. The company has trained and employed over 10 000 South Africans at various levels, including franchisees, restaurant managers, and crew. It was voted the Deloitte Best Company to Work for in South Africa for 2009, 2010, and 2011. Mcdonald's also offers high-quality coffee and healthy drinks through its McCaf brand. Their coffee drinks are made from quality coffee beans that originate from areas all over the world. In America, the McCafs compete with Starbucks. McDonald's utilizes an excellent operations strategy to gain a larger market share and to increase value for the shareholders. The corporation specifically focuses on speed, standardization, quality, and affordability. McDonald's has moved ahead of the competition by focusing on the three main bases - speed, affordability, and standardization - to make the customers happy. Through extensive market research and surveys, the organization discovered that the top priority of its customers was speed. Speed is the key factor in McDonald's operation strategy - from the moment a customer places an order until he or she leaves. To reduce the amount of time it takes to provide services, the company uses standardized training processes for its employees and new drive-through layouts. Mcdonald's also competes by offering low prices. To offer quality products at low cost requires efficient processes throughout the entire organization. Once again, this goal links to its vision statement: The franchise will be the most efficient provider by offering the best value to most people. Mcdonald's incorporates several avenues to provide good value to its customers. One example that the company has employed for many years is the value meal. Globally, McDonald's is fighting declines in customer traffic, a result of weak consumer spending worldwide. The value-driven strategy is an effort to compete for budget-minded consumers. Value is critical, because the consumer is still financially weak, facing higher petrol prices, increased taxes, and high unemployment. Value is the number one driver of customer traffic. Mcdonald's prides itself on the quality of their food. They use real, quality ingredients. For example, they only use 100% pure beef in their burgers. More than 97% of all food served in McDonald's restaurants is produced by local South African suppliers to meet the organization's highest quality standards. On their international website, they also provide information on the nutritional information of their food in order to assist customers in making informed good choices when visiting their restaurants. Mcdonald's strives to offer their customers a diverse menu to satisfy the needs of the entire family. Furthermore, all the South African McDonald's restaurants are approved by the Muslim Judicial Council Halaal Trust. Although Africa has over 1.2 billion people Mcdonald's is only present in four African countries, namely Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, and Mauritius. There has been a lot of speculation about when Mcdonald's will enter the Nigerian market. The biggest obstacle blocking them from Nigeria is a lack of adequate supply chains. It lies too far from South Africa, Egypt, or Morocco to simply expand existing supply chains.

Question 1

1.1. Distinguish between four levels of strategy in business organizations with specific reference to the decision-making roles of managers. Next to each manager, provide an example of a decision that this manager might have to make. Your examples must be related to Mcdonald's. (12 marks)

Use a table like the one below to structure your answer: Level of strategy Manager who makes the decision Example of a decision