How do you think McDonalds and Starbucks are able to establish their brands to fit local markets through architectural design of the stores, their e–commerce strategies and service to accommodate the local markets and culture? Explain their approaches individually and see if there are any differences or similarities. Do you think Starbucks benefitted from the missteps by McDonalds that you will read about in your research?
Both these companies follow the business dictum “think globally but act locally” (Montgomery Research, 2008). Both make effort to establish their brands by experience differentiation. Both corporations focus their local and global marketing on identification of the emotional experience as part of the consumer …show more content…

In an attempt to keep sales up over time, Starbucks has tried altering stores environment, changing background music, offering discounted Wi-Fi, promoting discount club cards, and making variations in their basic menu and they even experimented with one dollar coffee but generally these methods have not stopped the drop in their sales over time (Winslow, 2008).
Current E-commerce strategies of these two corporations vary greatly. Differences are obvious between the design styles and offered number of actual customized foreign websites. There is customization showing real differentiation for each specific country (114 different worldwide) McDonald's websites than for the one primary Starbucks website with links to thirty countries worldwide. All the McDonald's websites are more colorful, hip and show big pictures of the newest food products, a toll-free consumer hotline, offer free Wi-Fi, links for food nutritional values, careers and having local fun (Startz, 2009). In France McDonald's downplays U.S. roots and uses France's Asterix (a local cartoon character) for marketing on their French website and on TV instead of the traditional Ronald McDonald (Mininni, 2009). Starbucks uses a simplistic low key corporate website that offers standardized links to their history, charities, local events, buying their coffee and tea, discounted Wi-Fi time and the Starbucks coffee card. Starbucks has