Negative Effects Of Mcdonaldization

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For many Americans, McDonald’s is a road trip staple. This is true to the extent that, without any planning, it is safe to assume that you’ll be able to stop at a McDonald’s right in the middle of your next big drive. Availability is the first of many ways in which the typical fast food stop is extremely predictable. Once you arrive, you are sure to find the same familiar menu that you know from home. Furthermore, you will find clean bathrooms, a table to sit at, and a line that provides just enough time for you to decide what to order. On top of that, you’ll be back on the road within 30 minutes (sooner if you decide to eat while driving). The McDonald’s experience certainly exemplifies the, “efficiency, predictability, calculability, substitution …show more content…

Since, “only ten percent of Chinese people can afford a Big Mac”, people in China must be choosing to spend money at McDonald’s rather than elsewhere (Drucker, 4). In the United States, people frequent fast food restaurants despite having the opportunity to cook cheaper and healthier meals using ingredients from the grocery store. If McDonaldization is harming us by homogenizing our culture, who exactly is being harmed? It’s unreasonable to assert that it is the American consumer, who can choose between fast food, the grocery store, and a wide variety of thriving restaurants selling food from all over the world. Furthermore, people in other Countries aren’t having their cultures wiped out by American fast food. As James Watson points out, McDonalds needed to adapt in many ways to fit in with the culture of foreign countries like China (Watson). More dramatically, as Stephen Drucker observed in 1996, “This summer McDonald 's will open its first restaurant in India. It will serve no hamburgers” (Drucker, 6). Even if fast food were colonizing the world, this level of local adaptation makes it clear that McDonalds is by no means serving everybody the same

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