Posted: Mar 1, 2018

By: Alison Adair

Putting the theory into practice

Western Continuing Studies combines leading-edge research with real-world application, resulting in development of skills and knowledge that you can take away and immediately put to use.

What you learn as students during high school, college, undergraduate and graduate studies has a lot to do with building critical thinking skills and developing an understanding of the world.

How can you apply what you learn in class to the real-world?

This is an example from Jacki Fraggis, a Business Strategy student.

McDonald's vs McCafe

A couple weeks ago, my husband and I went to New York and we talking about my class. He asked what I often ask myself, what was the point? Not as in you are wasting your time but as in teach me too. To explain the relevance of this course we stopped at McDonald’s and I started to show him business strategy at its finest. I talked about the strength and value of brand image and how McDonald’s was a staple growing up for us; we were lucky if we went to McD’s, took our own kids there for a “treat” and also the convenience of it all. Then the social aspect started kicking in and McDonald’s was rebranded as a “fat food” restaurant no longer a “fast food restaurant”. As we were standing in line I asked him to find the name McDonald’s anywhere. The signage was McCafe, only the M on the food containers, and the only spot you could find the McDonald’s name was on the pop cup and it was in the fine print.

I explained that McDonald's had changed its approach to “Starbucks experience with a Tim Horton’s Price” due to social pressure, changed the menu due to political pressure (food content listings) and he just stood there looking at me dumbfounded because he didn’t see the change happening but had just accepted the McCafe branding. I did go further into the different tools and did some other analysis but I have to say it was super cool to apply our learning to a current situation with an industry super giant.

Business Strategy

Discover how to develop and maintain a strategy for sustainable performance. Look at the big pictures and address the challenges involved in drafting a strategic plan.

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