Comparing McDonald's food marketing practices on official Instagram accounts across 15 countries

Background: Social media advertising by fast food companies continues to increase globally, and exposure to food advertising contributes to poor diet and negative health outcomes (eg, cardiovascular disease). McDonald's-the largest fast food company in the world-operates in 101 countries, but little is known about their marketing techniques in various regions. The objective of this study was to compare the social media advertising practices of McDonald's-the largest fast food company in the world-in 15 high-income, upper-middle-income and lower-middle-income countries.

Methods: We randomly selected official McDonald's Instagram accounts for 15 high-income, upper-middle-income and lower-middle-income countries. We captured all the screenshots that McDonald's posted on those Instagram accounts from September to December 2019. We quantified the number of followers, 'likes', 'comments' and video views associated with each account in April 2020. We used content analysis to examine differences in the marketing techniques.

Results: The 15 accounts collectively maintained 10 million followers and generated 3.9 million 'likes', 164 816 comments and 38.2 million video views. We identified 849 posts. The three lower-middle-income countries had more posts (n=324; M, SD=108.0, 38.2 posts) than the five upper-middle-income countries (n=227; M, SD=45.4, 37.5 posts) and seven high-income countries (n=298; M, SD=42.6, 28.2 posts). Approximately 12% of the posts in high-income countries included child-targeted themes compared with 22% in lower-middle-income countries. Fourteen per cent of the posts in high-income countries included price promotions and free giveaways compared with 40% in lower-middle-income countries.

Conclusions: Social media advertising has enabled McDonald's to reach millions of consumers in lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries with disproportionately greater child-targeted ads and price promotions in lower-middle-income countries. Such reach is concerning because of the increased risk of diet-related illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, in these regions.