Post McDonaldization Era

The Mcdonaldization of society is an interesting concept, a concept that I have never even given thought to. The book defines McDonaldization as the increasing presence of the fast food model in common social institutions (OpenStax 127). I think the biggest example of this concept is Walmart, Walmart's are standardized, highly efficient, and highly profitable. For example lets say you move to a new city and you decide to grow grocery shopping, you have two options a local store or a Walmart, you decide to go to Walmart because it is almost guaranteed that you will find everything you need and for much cheaper than the local equivalent . That is McDonaldization but it doesn't only effect grocery stores, Sporting good stores, coffee shops, restaurants, etc.

I believe that overall the standardization or Mcdonaldization is a good thing, but it does have many faults. As the book mentions product quality, less variety, and generic experience are associated with McDonaldization (OpenStax 127), Although there are a couple major faults created by it. McDonaldization has negative consequences towards small business (Their only competition), with the rise of chain grocery stores local stores are non existent, when was the last time you saw a local grocery store? A second issue is the effect it has on product quality and variety, IKEA is a massive superstore for moderately priced furniture but the furniture is usually cheaply made and is only ever 1–2 styles in contrast to local furniture stores with varied prices and extreme variety of styles but people will chose IKEA because the price never changes and you know exactly what you are getting.

I think the McDonaldization of society has almost reached a max point, there can only be so many chains competing against each other, this doesn't mean it will go away only that new chains will be created at a much slower rate. One of the reasons is because some of these chains have pseudo-monopolies on their products. A good example is Starbucks, sure there are other coffee chains out there but Starbucks will always have the most customers and highest praise. I would say we are in the post Mcdonaldization era, where all the current chains using the fast food models are kings of their respective products.