This report considers 20 American fast food chains and analyses their performance on social media for the previous month. Simplify360’s proprietary SSI index was used to rank the brands according to their popularity on social media. The following chains were considered for the analysis:
- Taco Bell
- Chipotle Mexican Grill
- Five Guys Burgers and Fries
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Del Taco
- Sonic Drive-In
- Tim Horton’s
- Starbucks
- Jimmy John’s
- Whataburger
- Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen
- Haagen-Dazs
- McDonald’s
- KFC
- Burger King
- Pizza Hut
- Domino’s Pizza
- California Pizza Kitchen
- Papa John’s
- Sbarro
The top American brands on social media are listed below:
- McDonald’s
- Starbucks
- Taco Bell
- KFC
- Burger King
- Pizza Hut
- Domino’s Pizza
- Whataburger
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Jimmy John’s
It is evident that there is a correlation between a firm’s presence on a global level with its popularity. Most of the global brands also have a large number of outlets across America. Whataburger and Jimmy John’s are the only brands with presence limited to the United States. Whataburger chalked up an impressive performance even though it is present only in 10 southern states. Jimmy John’s is present in 44.
Among burger brands analysed, McDonald’s led the pack. Taco Bell was the leader in Tex-Mex and Starbucks in beverages. KFC among the chicken brands and Pizza Hut among the pizzas, are most popular. Ben & Jerry was the most popular among ice cream brands on social media.
Another trend noticed was that local brands like Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, Whataburger and Sonic Drive-In engage their customers really well compared to global brands. Customers show more loyalty towards local brands compared to global chains as well. Even though they have less followers than the global giants, tweets per customers are higher. Surprisingly, Taco Bell fared really well on this metric compared to Starbucks and McDonald’s, who couldn’t engage a major part of their large fan base.
Both, Starbucks and McDonald’s have outstripped their competitors when it comes to Likes on Facebook and Followers on Twitter. Of the total number of Facebook likes and number of Twitter followers all these 20 brands have, 47.5% and 62.5% respectively have been accounted by these 2 brands combined. The others have a long way to go if they want to catch up with these 2. When it comes to Facebook buzz as well, these 2 brands are the leaders. McDonald’s accounts for 19.4% of the traffic related to these 20 brands on Facebook. Starbuck’s share is 15%.
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