Monopoly is Always Evil

I love McDonald's I eat their all the time but during Monopoly season I practically eat their every day. McDonald's once a year does a Monopoly game for a month by placing game pieces on their food items. Though this seems like harmless fun McDonald's is using behavioral economics to control what you buy. They do this by threshold values and money illusion.

These threshold values are just behavior economics, during monopoly season people tend over-value certain items because they have symbolic value. Not only do you get food but you also get a fun game in your meal, with a possibility of winning prizes (up to a million dollars). McDonald's is heavily advertising their million dollar prize because there is heavy meaning behind a million dollars. I mean who doesn't want to be a millionaire!
This is where money illusion comes in because if you win you're not gonna be a millionaire. McDonald's has it set up in payment plans where you would get $50,000 annually for 20 years. So you wouldn't be a millionaire. But maybe you are thinking hey $50,000 is still awesome, and it is but $50,000 won't buy in 20 years what it would today. McDonald's is just hopping that American's don't realize this. This is money illusion because costumers are thinking about what the money prize value is worth now not the real value.

So how much would you actually receive of this 1 million dollar prize over 20 years. Well the average inflation rate in 3.5%, so that would turn your 1 million dollars into $735,000 in today's dollar value. Then don't forget about taxes (ugh don't you just hate taxes). With taxes and inflation your 1 million dollars now turns into more like $500,000. But hey money is money its better than nothing so I'm not complaining.
McDonald's earns a lot of money at this time, even though they are giving out a bunch of free prizes and money because they strategically place there monopoly game pieces. An example is how they place the 4 pieces on large fries, this is to make you think "well I guess I can spend an extra 30 cents for 2 more game pieces." Also the "awesome" free prizes they give out are always their least sold items, this is so they can get people to try these items and maybe start to like them and buy them more often.

Also they don't give that many chances to win the big prizes. In the photo above you can see that they always mass produce some game pieces but for every section they save one piece that they only make a few of. When looking at this you also need to take into consideration the amount of people who don't play. Who just eat and throw their game pieces away without looking, or forget to take them off. That is another thing McDonald's is banking on.
So McDonald's is the real winner of Monopoly but hey it's still fun . . . it's at least better than Ekern Monopoly.