INTRODUCTION:

Burger King (BK) is an American global chain

 of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered

in the unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, Florida,

the company was founded in 1953 as InstaBurger King

, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain. After Insta-Burger King ran into financial
difficulties in 1954, its two Miami-based franchisees David Edgerton and James
McLamorepurchased the company and renamed it "Burger King". Over the next half-century,
the company would change hands four times, with its third set of owners, a partnership of TPG
Capital, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, taking it public in 2002. In late
2010, 3G Capital of Brazil acquired a majority stake in the company, in a deal valued at US$3.26
billion. The new owners promptly initiated a restructuring of the company to reverse its
fortunes. 3G, along with partner Berkshire Hathaway, eventually merged the company with the
Canadian-based doughnut chain Tim Hortons, under the auspices of a new Canadian-based
parent company named Restaurant Brands International.

Background to the organization

Burger King is one of the largest fast food chains in the world, with more than $2 billion in
annual revenue. Burger King is the second largest hamburger fast food chain in the world,
trailing only behind McDonald's. Burger King has over 12,000 restaurants covering all 50 States
and 73 different countries.
Some of the notable products from Burger King include the Whopper sandwich, chicken
sandwiches, chicken tenders, and fries. Burger King also offers other choices such as salads,
breakfast items, and desserts.
The first Burger King, called "Insta Burger King" opened in 1954 in a Miami, Florida suburb.
About 90% of Burger King restaurants are independent franchises. The company went public
with an Initial Public Offering in 2006. In 2009 Burger King introduced the Whopper Bar which is
a division of the restaurant that is more like a bar that serves drinks and also offers Whoppers.
Burger King has won several awards including being named one of the top 100 Global Brands
by Inter-brand.
Burger King's slogan is "just the way you like them" and the vision is "we proudly serve the best
burgers in the business, plus a variety of real, authentic foods..all freshly prepared..just the way
you want it." Their values are to be fairness, diversity, respect, caring, clear accountabilities,
teamwork, high standards, commitment to excellence, celebrating their successes.

General environment analysis

Demographic
Mostly located in urban residential area.
Target customer between 18 to 34 years old.
Target to the middle income group.
Customer population growing.

Socio-cultural

Nowadays people in the society always prefer healthy lifestyle to avoid any negative disease
happen on them.
Working hours too long caused people prefer eat outside food instead of cooking themselves.
Materialistic society
People like to spend since income per capital of Malaysia increasing this few years.

Technology
Technology advancement leads the process of output more effective and also efficiency.

Globalization
Malaysia government open business length for foreigner investor to running their business in
Malaysia. There are so many companies of foreigner we may saw in Malaysia such as Burger
King, Mac Donald and so on.

Economy
The rising of petrol price in Malaysia affect the transportation cost of every business become
higher.
Prices of certain goods grow up and lead the cost of production increase.

Porter's 5 Forces
New entrants:
Recently, the current players established are very powerful, so Burger King would not need to
pay so much attention in worry about the new entrants. So this kind of risk is very low. Besides,
Burger King is a one of the oldest fast food's brand, it was established in 1953. Their reputation
and the quality of food, the material they used were trusted by their customers. So if the new
entrants would like to join and compete with Burger King and want to gain the market share
and challenge the existed players are very hard. Burger King is a franchised company. If you
want to enter the market, you must have huge capital to invest and very advanced patented
technology. Due to these specialized assets and the huge cost to exit, there is very difficult for
you to go in and exit from the market of the fast food.

Substitutes:
There is many choices and low switching cost. It is very easy for customers to choose the foods
from McDonald's, KFC and Wendy's Burger. They also can produce the very similar products,
such as Fish Burger, Chicken Burger, Beef Sandwich, French Fries, dessert and so on. Another
example is the breakfast. It is possible for the customers to change from Burger King Burger
breakfast set to McDonald's Burger Breakfast set, it can be very subjective, such as, no parking,
too many people, the temperature too high or too cold in the restaurant and so on can affect
the customers to change their mind and decide to purchase the competitors' substitutes to
satisfied their needs.

Bargain of Suppliers:
Burger King has more than 350 suppliers and distributors. They are recognized as an important
and integral supplier to the Burger King System and they will continue to provide the Burger
King system with the excellence service and using the high quality marketing communications
services. Burger King is managing well in supplier diversity programs and maintaining a diverse
portfolio of suppliers. Restaurant Services Inc. (RSI), it is very famous and strong purchasing
agent, they help the vast majority of products and services used by Burger King's owners in
United States and is the manager of the system's supply chain. RSI works and communicate
closely with the restaurant owners, Burger King Corporation, food and packaging suppliers,
marketing agencies, equipment vendors, distributors, and information system providers in
order to streamline and improve their supply-chain and make the system more efficient.

Bargain of Customer:
They added salad bars and some "light" menu for customers, and it can less fatty and healthier
image. It will increase their customers' power and become stronger. It also can attract the olds
to come and enjoy the food even the foods are become more healthy but these still delicious.
Managing inter-firm rivalry:
Their biggest competitor is McDonald's, Wendy's International Inc. and Yum Brands and Owner
of Taco Bell. Burger King's market shares are lesser than McDonald's. Burger King has a market
share is around 21.9 % and McDonald has approximate 44%, which is double of the Burger
King's market share percentage. Recently, McDonald is rapid of expanding the branches in
many third world countries, such as China and India. Burger King just only expanded in handful
of international market, not like McDonald. So we know that McDonalds has the most of them
market share and branch, means that they are having the market position now. It also means
that they are the leader in the market and they have the powerful right to set the food prices
and McDonald's growth very fast also. Due to their product differentiation level quite low, so
the rivalry is high intensive.

Summary of environmental scanning

Burger King is the one of the dominator in the fast food industry with high reputation and high
market shares. New entrants who would like to join the industry and compete with Burger King
and want to gain the market share and challenge the existed players are very hard. However,
the main competitors of Burger King are still McDonald's, KFC and Wendy's Burger. Because
there is many choices and low switching cost between them. So, Burger King still needs to put
effort to compete with this few main competitors. Moreover, Burger King is managing well in
supplier diversity programs and maintaining a diverse portfolio of suppliers. Restaurant Services
Inc. (RSI), it is very famous and strong purchasing agent, It works and communicate closely with
the restaurant owners, Burger King Corporation, food and packaging suppliers, marketing
agencies, equipment vendors, distributors, and information system providers in order to
streamline and improve their supply-chain and make the system more efficient.

SWOT Analysis

Capital Market -
The strength of Burger King on Capital Market is the company able to fully utilize their on hand
resources. It makes their operation more efficiency and brings the company growth faster.
However, the weakness from this company is their share at market is declining. So that the
available capital will become lower and also it will bring them liquidity problem and directly
influence the confidence of the investor. The company has the opportunity to acquire some of
the restaurants and growing the restaurants industry. It can contribute more profit to company
in order to overcome the liquidity problem. There have some threat to the company which is
the stringent regulation set by government. Besides it, the economy downturn may cause the
company not doing well too.

Product Market -
For the strength, company has the strong brand and product portfolio. Their products are
differentiated from other products. Burger king has largest restaurant network over the world.
For this reason, the customer, supplier and creditors are reliable on them. Furthermore, they
are able to bring forth new ideas in their products constantly. Nevertheless, the weakness of
the burger king in product market is less control over franchises. It may cause the company loss
their goodwill or loyalty from customer. On the other side, the opportunity of the company is
launch of various innovative products through their potential creativity. It can also improve
their product and brand well-known. The threat to the company is outbreak of Food-borne
Illnesses. It may cause the consumer not reliable on their food. Besides, competitive markets
affect their performance on business. The costs of food are rising higher than standard inflation
and due to loss of some profit. Since, burger king is fast food restaurants, while health concerns
among general public. So the revenue will drop too.

Organization -
For the strength, company has a clear organizational goal of profitability. So company's
employees have the ability to reorganizations achieve their goals. Moreover, company also will
give the achievement awards and some incentives to the stakeholders who are employees or
managers who have made significant contributions. This is a good way by giving rewards due to
increase employees confident that their personal needs will be met and motivate them. For the
weakness, company management lacked focus and direction and has struggled with marketing
mix decisions. Service was slow and food preparation was inconsistent and many stores needed
remodeling. This is another problem of the services provided by the employees. For the
opportunity, company has to support, encourage and invest in their career growth by providing
numerous training and development programs designed to help employees build useful skills
and competencies. Hence, this is an opportunity for them to upgrade their skills and it enables
them to perform to the best of their ability. Another opportunity is at every each year, global
managers attend their annual convention to engage with their franchisees and to hear about
their strategic vision, operations, development and marketing plans for the upcoming year. For
the threat, the outside competitive will affect company performance, so the mangers need to
solve the competitive problems and control the management in organization. Besides, another
threat is the unemployment rate is getting higher nowadays so it will lead employees are hard
to find the jobs.

Summary of situation analysis

Burger King Holdings, INC is focuses on its company strategies analysis and their performance
within the fast food service restaurant industry. Therefore, company faces countless internal
and external issues in environmental analysis, and these will influencing their business
operations which is prominent in the industry analysis. Thus, Burger King Holdings identify its
company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in three stakeholders group.
Consequently, each aspect affecting Burger King is then applied into a SWOT analysis to
recognize the company's strongest characteristics and areas in need of improvement to
establish the firm's success of gradually increase the shareholder value. Besides, in applying the
swot analysis is a essential that help company to minimize and avoid weaknesses and threats.
The weaknesses in company must be scrutinized in order to changed them into strengths part.
Similarity, in the other way round the threats should be changed into opportunities. Therefore,
both strengths and opportunities will be matched to optimize company potential for
accomplishes goals in the fast food industry.

Strategic Options
Strategic options are creative alternative action-oriented responses to the external situation
that an organization (or group of organizations) faces. Strategic options would help Burger King
to take advantage of facts and actors, trends, opportunities and threat of the outside world.
Burger King can use this tool 'Strategic options' to identify and make a preliminary screening of
alternative strategic options or perspectives.
Burger King opened more branches in superior retail locations which would give them powerful
capabilities over their competitors. They can have stores that are exposed to areas with much
higher foot traffic and better local demographic compositions. Also, given the high visibility
associated with premium retail locations the cost of their marketing budget would be
significantly reduced due to the incidental advertisements the storefronts naturally offer.
When Burger King enters into mature state, it should shift its focus away from differentiation
based superiority to cost-based superiority. Thus, low cost often becomes the overall driving
force of corporate profit. Low cost advantage can be achieved through increased economies of
scale. They should improve their capabilities in their distribution network and maintain their
industry lead in low transportation costs.
Segment and customer selection becomes crucially important to maintaining a high profit
margin. While the trend in the specialty burger industry is to target the general population,
Burger King should focus on a customer segment that offers the greatest amount of price
elasticity. This segment should compose of those customers most loyal to the Burger Kings'
brand who are also in the highest income bracket.

.
Furthermore, Burger King is implementing new and different marketing connections which
extend the corporate strategy of strengthening their brand image. The efforts for the strategic
option include long term branding campaigns through radio and television commercials which
have a time caption of 30 seconds and 60 seconds respectively. This campaign strategy can
better spread the product and service offerings visually and on audio to reach the mass
customers. In addition, the strategic option of Burger King towards expanding their market
share involves an advertising approach focusing on new product offerings as well as the existing
popular products such as the Whooper.
The higher demand and popularity of dining among young and middle age groups has provided
a potential for Burger King to increase its profits and with greater market potential, the
company has utilized the improvements in technology and technology equipment to provide
better services that may attract these potential customers. In addition, the company focuses on
training its staff for better service offering and better preparation of food.

KEY SELECTION CRITERIA

BURGER KING'S key selection criteria is the criteria which burger king uses as a basic framework
of evaluation and selection when creating and deciding strategic options. Here is but a few Key
selection criteria that BURGER KING uses.

 Alignment with core competencies

 Alignment with strategic goals
 Internal rate of return in excess of (a certain number say 15%)
 Improve customer service
 Urgency

ALIGNMENT WITH CORE COMPETENICES-

Core competencies are those capabilities that are critical to a business achieving competitive
advantage, these include technical/subject matter know-how, a reliable process and/or close
relationships with customers and suppliers. It may also include product development or culture.
Therefore when BURGER KING develops a strategic option it makes sure that it has considered
and factored in its core competencies to make sure it has the capability to facilitate this
strategic option.

ALIGNMENT WITH STRATEGIC GOALS-

When BURGER KING develops a strategic option it makes sure that this option is in line with its
primary strategic goals and that the core aims and goals of BURGER KING are factored into this
option, so that while the strategic option gives them an edge it doesn't deviate from what
BURGER KING is primarily trying to achieve.

INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN (IN EXCESS OF A SET NUMBER) -

Is a rate of return used in capital budgeting to measure and compare
the profitability of investments it is an indicator of the efficiency, quality, or yield of an
investment. BURGER KING uses IRR to evaluate if a specific strategic option is profitable,
efficient or of a significant yield in comparison to their basic required rate of return which is
determined before evaluation and decision on strategic option can be made therefore not just
establishing a bench mark of return but a basis of comparison between strategic options and
alternatives.

IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE-

BURGER KING is in the fast food industry, which is one of the most product discriminate
industries, because consumers have so many choices between other chains such as
MCDONALDS, KFC, WENDY'S etc. BURGER KING has differentiated itself by delivering what they
call the 'CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE', which means providing superior customer service and they
do this by making the CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE a key and core element of all their strategic
options. They use customer service as key selection criteria to make sure that all their strategic
options improve the customer experience and hence give them a competitive edge in their
extremely competitive industry.

URGENCY-
another key selection criterion is URGENCY this criteria analyses how urgent is the requirement
for the strategic option and how urgently the strategic option can be implemented. This is done
to make sure BURGER KING strategic options are both responsive and effective thus achieving
strategic target.

Recommendations
Bases on the strategic options, to open more branches is considered inefficient strategy
,because it need a lot of money to open the new branches ,but can implementing more other
strategy to reach same goal which is increase the market share like franchisee system and also
the delivery system. By using the low cost delivery system, more customers can enjoy the
Burger King product everywhere and every time .It is considered more efficiently than open
more branches . In the franchisee system, Burger King can earn more profit from the
transaction and increase the market share, but to focus on the product quality, Burger King
should put more attention on it to keep the reputation maintain and increase in the same time.
The franchisee training is very important on it .For the franchisee system, Burger King should
also control the location of the branch to avoid too many branches in the same certain place,
which can reduce the competition of all franchisee and market inefficient.
Low cost strategic is a good strategic to reach the higher profit, with a good distribution
network will hit the corporate low cost strategic. Maintain the quality and lower the production
cost is a good way to increase the profit but both element should be move in the same
direction .
For the "highest income brackets" of the Burger King market segmentation, will reduce the
Burger King's customer population, because the cheaper should be more attracted. By increase
the customer population, Burger King should do more promotion and also the advertising for
the short-term. On the other hand, to increase the customers population in the long-term,
Burger King should make the product differentiation by develop more product types and
favorites which can attract more new customer. This development will increase the market
shares and also the competitive advantages for the Burger King to survive in this competition
market.
Advertising is important element to reach the profit margin increase, Burger King should use
the low cost advertising which can effective and also save a huge of money .The population
lifestyle is changed and the technology improvement Burger King cannot using the traditional
media to promote their product, teenagers and adults are prefer internet more than the
newspaper nowadays. Like using the website advertisement is consider as cheaper advertising
which also can filter the population to reach the market segmentation more effective than
without filter it. You will never advertising the Burger King to a 80 years old ,so we need to filter
the population first to the target customer .

Conclusion
The last half of the twentieth century witnessed the development of many fast food chains,
though Burger King is the second largest hamburger fast food restaurant in the world, but it still
maximize the profit and minimize cost.
With a general environment analysis, the company can see a longer horizon of time, and be
able to clarify strategic opportunities and threats that the organization faces. By looking to the
outside environment to see the potential forces of change looming on the horizon, Burger King
can take the strategic planning process out of the arena of today and into the horizon of
tomorrow.
By the strength of the company to fully utilize their on hand resources, it bring the company
growth faster. They are differentiate their products, it make the customers, suppliers can
reliable on them. By saturating nearly every market it has entered, Burger King now envisions
itself as a stabilized company, with entering new markets as they are in exploiting those
markets in every way available to them. The company is also more able to respond to consumer
demands that, earlier in its existence, would have been impossible. The best strategic options
and key selection criteria that Burger King has been using to strengthen their company business
management. They are maintaining the high profit with the low-cost products provide to the
market, which can get the higher demand and popularity from the different stages of customer.
So by overall, Burger King has the persistent business management to maintain their business
no matter on their products, promotional or business strategic, it bring the company to growth
rapidly and globalize.