[kmikeym]

It's not new. McD acquired 'Dynamic Yield' back in 2019 and has long been using big data. There is an case study from 2020 about it called "McDonald's: Can A Behemoth Lead in the Era of Artificial Intelligence?" by Fabrizio DiMuro of the University of Winnipeg.

[andy800]

They must be doing a very poor job of optimizing their marketing. I had a long history or ordering the same items using the same "deal", dozens of times a year. They removed that deal and my spend at McDonald's dropped 90%. I didn't place a single order for 6 months - unprecedented. Have the noticed? Have they adjusted their marketing towards me? Did they bring back that deal or offer alternative promotions on the same items? No, no, and no. The purpose of apps and big data and especially AI is to be able to achieve the goal of 1-to-1 marketing based on individual preferences and patterns. Yet it appears a massive corporation like McDonald's is unable to achieve any of these goals, it's just continuing "mass marketing" - same deals to huge portions of their customer base, without differentiation - the same as the 1990's.

I admit to being especially sensitive since I worked in personalized loyalty marketing for nearly 20 years, so failures and missed opportunities really annoy me as both a customer and practician of the art.

[kmikeym]

I think it's hard for us as individuals to understand the scale of McDonald's. They claim that 1 in 8 people in America have worked at McDonald's... that's... INSANE!

[andy800]

Sorry, not giving McDonald's a pass. They have a large team of data scientists and technologists working on their app and customer data. Even with a massive base, running a query to find individuals whose spend has dropped 50% y-o-y is not too difficult, and should be an urgent priority at a company that reported "negative comparable guest counts" (i.e. fewer customers y-o-y) for fiscal 2024.