It's all about the brand, unfortunately.
People only like the cheapness and the convenience (and perhaps the no-surprise factor).
Everything else being the same (price and time to prepare), nobody would eat McDonalds vs a quality burger (except the kind of people who eat Hot Pockets for the taste, but that's a much smaller demographic than McDonalds buyers).
No-surprise factor isn't that big of an issue if you're buying; restaurants tend to have consistent food quality & taste too.
Where McD’s really shines, though, is their breakfast offerings. And with that said, I think I will head there now for a quick breakfast (I live ~5 blocks from McDs).
It seems many or even most people can't tell the difference and the ambience and service is as important as the food.
It surprises me in the case of frozen patties like McDonald's though. A frozen patty looks nothing at all like an actual burger made from ground meat. It tastes differently as well, of course, but what matters is that it looks completely different!
At the risk of derailing the thread, that would be the lesson I wish people would take away from that example.
Criticizing fast food like that is dumb signalling IMO; McDonald's!hamburger != homemade!hamburger. It's an entirely different product sharing the same name and some of the ingredients. It tastes different, and has a different form factor. People like this, even if many don't want to admit it to others (or themselves). When I go for a McD's hamburger instead of a foodtruck one, or when I say I prefer chain restaurant pizza over a home made one, it's because I want a different product. Treating the two as the same category is like treating tea and coffee as the same thing.