Burger King Business Communication Case Study

Burger King is a fast food Corporation. It is the second largest fast-food chain in the United States, trailing only McDonalds. The company franchises more than 10,400 restaurants and owns about 1,000 for a chain wide total exceeding 11,455, with locations in all 50 states and 56 countries. The company serves 15.7 million customers each day and over 2.4 billion Burger King Hamburgers are sold each year across the globe.

Miami entrepreneurs James McLamore and David Edgerton founded Burger King Corporation in 1954.

REASONING

The reason as to why I have chosen to write a report on Burger King is to illustrate its communication strategies and its communication effectiveness.

Business Demographics

Demographics are attributes used for marketing purposes. Burger King uses the means of networking, media and the internet to communicate between different locations. The organisation uses its demographical strategies to meets it consumer interests and also for profitability to the company. Burger King’s demographic strategy is well planned and well laid out, making it easy to market the organisation to its customers who are from different age groups and from different cultural backgrounds.

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Organisational Goals

Burger King’s main aims and objectives are to serve its customers with the bests meals and services a fast food company could possibly provide. To achieve this, the organisation has a zero compromise policy for the communication of its aims and objectives. The aims and objectives are highly important to the organisation, for it is the only way the organisation maintains its integrity amongst it competitors and its customers. Burger King’s aims and objectives are well set and structured, making it relatively easy to communicate them within the organisation and also to its customers. The organisation’s main source to communicate its aims and objectives are through the media, banners, coupons, handouts and also through the internet.

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE AND ETHICS

Burger King is an organisation that serves customers from various backgrounds and cultures. This makes it extremely important to manage communication in the most delicate manner as possible. The organisation has to keep in mind that not all customers consume all the menus the company offers. For example: customers who are from an Indian background won’t eat beef, customers who are from a Muslim background won’t eat pork. Its vital information like these that the organisation has to keep track of in order to meet the needs of people who are from different backgrounds and cultures.

Management of Knowledge Resource

Management of knowledge resources is critical for any organisation. It helps in ensuring that vital knowledge is passed on within the organisation so that the organisation can maintain its ever long trend of providing the quality of work or service as it has been providing in the past. Burger King is one such Organisation that takes pride in its quality of service that it has been known of providing. Achieving this however took a lot of work and experience for the organisation. To ensure that knowledge and experience is passed on within the organisation, the Burger King Management team relies heavily on their old staffs who possess the skills and experience needed for the organisation to maintain its quality of work. The old staff members train and groom the new recruits so that they can cope with the organisations requirement standards and deliver quality services to its customers. The Management team of Burger King also holds staff meetings and orientations to ensure that vital knowledge and experience is equally shared amongst each and every member of the team. The also shuffle the teams together so that there is an equal balance of knowledge and experience within the teams.

Group Dynamics

Effective communication plays a key role in any organisation. It helps in avoiding conflicts and contributes to the development of a team within an organisation. Burger King also has certain procedures in place to ensure effective communication takes place within its teams. The communication procedures are well constructed. To ensure there is a practice of effective communication within the teams; the team members are expected to communicate with each other using the universal language which is English, they are also expected to wear their uniforms at all times and address each other with their names, team members are also expected to actively participate in any company meetings or seminars and verbally communicate with their team supervisors or managers. These measures ensure that there are no unnecessary conflicts within the teams and that the teams have a healthy team surrounding to work in. It also ensures that there is maximum development in the team and that the teams are always in a positive attitude while working. Effective Communication also contributes to the betterment of the organisation as a whole and also lets the team members within the organisation to improve on their communication skills.

Meeting Management

Meetings are an essential to any organisation. To ensure meeting runs effectively the Burger King Management Team has meetings every week and it demands all of its staff members to contribute towards the meetings. The staff members are expected to openly discuss any company matters or issues that may be concerning the staff members. Like wise the management is required to take into consideration the matters and issues and deal with it in a manner suitable for the organisation or to provide the staffs with alternatives to overcome the issues. Open discussions in meetings are extremely important because it is one of the ways which can contribute towards an effective and constructive meeting. Burger King also has hand outs which are issued to each member participating in the meeting prior to the meeting commence. This is done to ensure that there are no disruptions in the meeting and that each and every member of the team is up to date with what the meeting is about and what is expected of the members and what they are suppose to be discussing during the meeting.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the most important assets to an organisation. Therefore Burger King is always in touch with all those who have an interest in the organisation. The organisation does this by holding annual general meetings in which the stakeholders take part in. These meetings are held in order to discuss the organisations performance and status. It is also to discuss the stakeholders interests in the organisation and also what would be some of the actions that could be taken in order to raise the organisations performance. This is an effective means to communicate with the stakeholders because it creates opportunities for the stakeholders to put forward their personal views and thoughts which could help benefit the organisation. The organisation also sends out e-mails, letters, and barouches on a weekly basis to its stakeholders to keep them informed on how the company is coping.

Networks

Burger King has various ways of communicating with people who may potentially have an impact on the development of the organisation. To name a few of these ways; is through networking, barouches, banners, internet and media. These are some of the methods the Organisation uses to communicate with people who are interested in the organisation. These methods of communication are simple and yet an effective way for the organisation to interact and keep in touch with others. It is vital for any organisation to communicate with people regardless whether it is the staff members or the customers. This is to show that the organisation has an interest in the people and that they welcome peoples decisions and views towards the organisation.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Burger King has a well structured means of promoting the organisations. However though, this has room for further improvements. This is said because, Burger King promotes its self by using mostly the universal language “English” This is a possible set back for the organisation because in many countries “English” is not the first language. Therefore the organisation should consider advertising using other languages rather than just using “English” as their preferred language of advertisement.

To achieve its aims and objectives Burger King should ensure that its aims and objectives are understood not only by their staff members but also their customers as well. So to ensure that this happens, Burger King should also do organisational promotions whereby their senior staff members speak to his/her team personally and explain to them using practical examples of what is really required of them.

The organisation should employ more variety of people from different backgrounds in its crew rather than just having one dominant race. This should be done so that the sales team is better equipped with the knowledge from different races and that they can use this knowledge for promoting sales.

Knowledge is a vital part of any organisation and therefore it should be give the most priority. The Burger King organisation should be more focused on its Knowledge Resource Department and should improve on its IT sector to manage all its vital information and knowledge. The organisation should hire more IT professionals to handle all its information and all its company knowledge sectors.

To improve Group, the Burger King Organisation should concentrate more on improving staff communications by making it mandatory for any new recruitment to have “English” competency. This should be done so that there is less time consumption on training new recruits from different backgrounds.

It is essential for any organisation to hold meetings and for those meetings to succeed the meeting has to laid out in a planned and proper manner. The organisation should introduce a system whereby not everyone speaks at once but where one person is allowed to speak first and complete what he/she has to say and only than should the other person be given the chance to speak. Also there should be limitations as to what one has to say rather than just having an open discussion where there is no order to what is being said or discussed.

Stakeholders are vital assets to the organisation. Therefore Burger King should not only have annual general meetings but they should also hold monthly meetings with their stake holders so that they can build more on their professional relations and come up with more innovative ideas of as to how they can contribute towards further development of the organisation.

Network is also an important part of an organisation. It helps in building more exposure for the organisation with others. Burger King should do a little more than just using the internet or the media to network. They should send out teams on a weekly basis to go out and promote the organisation by chatting to people in the public about the organisation which would be more effective and would have a better result to its networks departments.

Findings

Upon completion of this report it can be conclude that Burger King has done a great amount of work to achieve its Effective Communication Aspects. The organisation has a well structured means of communication within the organisation and also with the public or its customers.

However, if the organisation takes heed of the recommendations and apply them to their communication strategy, the organisation should see an even better result as to what they are experiencing now in regards to their Communication Aspects.