A Not so Tasty Network
Looking at two relatively related articles “The McWhopper proposal, a co-branding between Burger King and McDonald’s” by Juan Quaglia and “Burger King | McWhopper Proposal – Collaboration or Consternation?” by Martín Echavarria. Both articles cover the proposal that Burger King extended McDonald’s to collaborate in the creation of a McWhopper on September 21, 2015, for Peace one Day an International Day of Peace set by the United Nations. The concept that these articles presented strongly reminded me of the Structural balance theorem which essentially explains how certain three-node (representative of people, corporations, etc.) structures wish to reach a stable, balanced state represented by two typical structures: the first all three nodes have a positive relationship between them, while the second is when two nodes have a positive relationship between them while all the relationship with the last node is negative.
As Quaglia shows in their article, the internet’s initial reactions to McDonald’s rejection of Burger King’s proposal on Twitter left many feeling upset as many felt that McDonald was missing the opportunity. But as Quaglia points out Mcdonald’s may not have felt that Burger King was equivalent to them in terms of sales and repertoire; therefore, bringing us to the context of the structural balance theorem once again as McDonald’s does not even view Burger King as a rival there is no need to maintain a stable structural balance between the two companies. Echavarria’s article also reveals Burger King’s forcefulness in creating an alliance relationship in an attempt to make a stable structural relationship between Mcdonald’s to get an edge over their competitor Wendy, which was off-putting going so far as to call it a unilateral act.
Links:
Echavarria: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/burger-king-mcwhopper-proposal-collaboration-martin-echavarria/
Quaglia: https://fameable.com/mcwhopper-cobranding-proposal/1015/