Despite Consumer Dissatisfaction, McDonald’s Still on Top

Survey reveals that all-day breakfast and new menus are most likely to bring customers back to the golden arches.

September 02, 2015

CHICAGO – Despite its well-documented struggles in recent years, including lower customer satisfaction levels, McDonald’s remains by far the dominant fast-food restaurant in the country. According to a survey conducted last month by Crain's Chicago Business, McDonald’s restaurants were visited more in a recent seven-day period than its next two competitors combined.

The online survey, conducted by the research group 8Sages, revealed that McDonald's’ problems with consumer perception are deep and pervasive and will not be easy to fix. But they also showed that the chain retains appeal for pockets of loyalists, continues to draw far more customers than its rivals and remains deeply embedded in the everyday lives of many Americans. The survey also indicates that the company appears to be on the right track with some of its recent initiatives, particularly its plan to introduce all-day breakfast nationwide and its decision to remove most antibiotics from its chicken products by 2017.

According to the report, McDonald's simply is not meeting customers' expectations. Key findings, both positive and negative for the chain’s prospects, include:

On a scale of 1 to 9, where 9 means "enjoyed it very much" and 1 means "did not enjoy it at all," 63.8% of respondents rate their last McDonald's visit as a 7 or higher. That's far below 79.8% of customers who ate at other fast-food restaurants. Those figures were even more dismal for those who placed orders inside the restaurant and not at a drive-through window. Just 61% of McDonald's customers were satisfied with those visits versus 84.6% of respondents who dined in at other fast-food outlets.
When asked whether they visited McDonald's more often or less compared with five years ago, more than double the number of respondents (48.4%) say they visited less, rather than more (20.4%). The biggest reason? Concerns about the food.
The survey asked respondents whether they would visit McDonald's more often if it made certain changes. The bad news first: 47.2% say none of the changes would make them visit more. The good news: Offering all-day breakfast, an initiative McDonald's is testing in some markets, would cause a third of Americans—and more than half of those who dined at McDonald's most recently—to visit more often.
The top reason fast-food customers would go to McDonald's more often is if the chain introduces a new value menu (36.5%), followed by all-day breakfast (34.6%) and serving meat raised without hormones and antibiotics (34.3%).
People still like its food. McDonald's ranked fourth among 11 competitors on having "the best burger." Among those who dined most recently, Big Mac ranked highest. It also can hold on to its crown as the best purveyor of French fries, running away with the title by a wide margin.
It has incredible reach, with more outlets than any other chain except Subway. Over a recent seven-day period, 31.0% of diners who visited a fast-food restaurant chose McDonald's. That's more than the two next-closest competitors, Burger King (15.4%) and Taco Bell (13.1%), combined. On top of that, nearly half of all 610 respondents had visited McDonald's at least once in the past month.
McDonald's is particularly strong during breakfast. Of respondents whose last fast-food meal was breakfast, 42.7% of them chose McDonald's, compared with 21.5% for Starbucks and 10.8% for Dunkin' Donuts.