Easily recognizable by its bright red and yellow letter “M” logo, how did McDonald’s successfully grow into the world’s largest fast-food chain? McDonald’s first began to expand their international markets in 1967, and now have over 36,000 restaurants in over 100 countries This could be attributed to McDonald’s effective marketing strategy of cultural relativism, which is the ability to understand another culture from its standards.
While every McDonald’s has the iconic Big Mac, the menus change depending on the country of the restaurant. The goal is to appeal to culture, to a society’s socially learned and shared ideas, behaviors, or material components, in this case, through food. What we eat and whom we eat with can strengthen the bonds between individuals, communities, and countries. Food serves a valuable purpose of displaying attitudes, practices, and rituals. According to McDonald’s, their menu is altered to reflect different tastes and local traditions for every country.
Starting in Europe, McDonald’s France used locally sourced French cheeses like chevre, cantal, and blue. McDonald’s Greece has a Big Mac drizzled with Tzatziki sauce in a pita. In the United Kingdom, healthy alternatives were important. McDonald’s catered to their values and collective ideas about what is desirable and undesirable in society by providing meat and dairy locally sourced from British and Irish farms.
In Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore, where other fast-food brands struggled to promote their food, McDonald’s prospered by being certified halal. According to the Islamic definition, halal refers to the permitted, allowed, and lawful foods. McDonald’s respects the beliefs and ideas generally held to be true within society by following religious norms. Moreover, the state enforces formal and legal rules, or laws, that require animal-slaughtering methods to follow halal guidelines in Malaysia and Singapore. Thus, McDonald’s creates core menu items using halal meat in these countries. In addition, pork and bacon products were removed since they are taboo and violate formal norms. Further aiding their success, there are dishes specifically crafted that are popular among citizens, such as McDonald’s Malaysia version of nasi lemak and McDonald’s Singapore nasi uduk and rica-rica chicken rice.
