Globalisation is every where, three months ago in Shanghai my hometown,I woke up in the morning turned on my Ipod from APPLE (America) and my speaker from SONY(Japan) and drank a bottle of milk from NESTLE(Switzerland) and put on my sneaker from NIKE(America) Those thing suppose to be thousand miles away from me but because of globalisation they all come sloser together.
Globalisation refers to a world in which societies,cultures,politics and economies have, in some sense come closer together(Kiely,1999) ,which means globalisation is not only about products from other countries, it could be cultures, for example,we never do christmas things in China before, but now Chinese people are willing to send christmas presents to friends and family members and decorate christmas trees. it also could be people in China love listening to the songs from Mariah Carey or watching the Downtown Abbey.
Its hard to say whether globalisation is a blessing or a curse,but it does influent our daily life from many aspects, in this blog I will examine why the globalisation of Mc Donald's are so successful and outline the advantages and disadvantages about it.
Mc Donald's has become not only the largest fast food restaurant organisation, but is a symbol of globalisation. It has 32,000 outlets in 117 countries. Mc Donald's daily customer traffic(62 million) is more than the population of UK. I found a video from Youtube:
WHY?
- Mc Donald's is trying its best stop the cultural change, by changing itself to fit. For example, in Italy Mc Donald's servers mediterranean salads, and fried rice is also available in Japan. In israel there are several kosher Mc Donald's restaurants,and in Mexican outlets sell burritos. These are just a few examples of the decisions made by Mc Donald's to change itself to fit the local culture.
- Homogeneous market needs and the amount of global customers. Citizens nowadays all live at a busy pace everybody want to get food as soon as possible instead of being in a long queue or spending ages waiting for lunch. Mc Donald's noticed this and take full use of Scientific management theory (Taylorism) on how to train their employees doing the jobs in the most efficient way.
- Transferable brands and advertising---advertisements to attract children all over the world. Mc Donald's especially focus on children's by offering happy meals.
ADVANTAGES:
- More employment opportunities---Mc Donald's has 31,000 restaurant in 119 countries, employing more than 1.5 million people, which is about 1/4 singapore's population ,thus increasing job opportunities world wide.
- Mc Donald's has contributed in giving greater access to a global marketplace of goods by its strong economic influence as they encourage many enterprisesto offer them different services in order to keep up with the demands of people.
- Increases global economy---Mc Donald's invests and supports initiatives to adapt its products and services to different local scales to ensure its global brand,which increases global economy.
DISADVANTAGES:
- Some local tiny and small industries will be ruined directly--- Due to the high market share in fast food industry occupied by Mc Donald's some chinese traditional fast food chain store were attacked seriously such as Honghong in my home town closed 12 outlets last year because of low profit.
- Cultural convergence---More people are keen on fast food.Besides, more people are moving towards the western fashion, it may affect the life style of local people for example high reliability on hamburg and coke cola may cause obesity problems.