Competition for Breakfast: McDonald's vs.Taco Bell

Ever since Taco Bell decided to extend their product line by offering breakfast items, the heat of the competition has risen. The breakfast market is huge in America, especially breakfast on the go. Chains are competing with one another trying to capture the market share of the fast paced early morning risers headed to work. Taco bell launched an advertisement that is very creative and clever featuring "Ronald McDonald", and no it is not the Ronald McDonald from the worlds largest hamburger chain that most of us are familiar with.

As a result, the international  major fast food chain restaurant, McDonald's decided to do something in response to this advertisement. They recently just announced that they will be offering free coffee for 2 weeks (March 31st-April 13). I was ecstatic to hear about this because i am a coffee guru and a poor college student, and free coffee is up my alley. But then i started to realize, wow this is a marketing weapon that they are utilizing to try to retain their customers during the early morning hours while trying to attract new customers. For a long time they have dominated the morning category, and they are not about to lose out to a chain restaurant that specializes in tacos in my opinion. McDonald's has held market share in the morning category for quite some time and consumers, like myself, are familiar with McCafe and the famous Egg McMuffin on their breakfast menu.

However, the motive behind this decision is to give something away for "free" to lure in traffic, in hopes that "other" purchases will be made from the menu. This marketing idea will not only get existing customers to come back more frequently, but it will reach out to customers who don't necessarily go to McDonald's on a regular basis. Where would you rather go eat breakfast? Taco Bell or McDonald's?