McDonaldization PDF

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Discussing McDonaldization in Walmart...

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Cierra Goss Professor Johnson SOCI 1101 5 September 2021

McDonaldization is when society grows fond of a fast-food restaurant because of its principles, efficiency, calculability, predictability, control, and irrationality of rationality. This way the restaurant finds out what exactly society likes about them and what they expect of them in order to gain more recognition. A great example of McDonaldization that I will be using is, Walmart. Looking deeper into each central theme that George Ritzer points out, can be found in other organizations dealing with retail as well. Starting with efficiency, Walmart has services that help their customers. They have a pick-up service, where the customer's order their products online, then go to the store where a worker will load up the customers vehicles with their things. Another service they offer is a delivery service, where the customer once again, orders their products online and then their order will be delivered to their home. One more service that is for the customer benefit is the selfcheckout lane inside of the store. They have lanes where the customer can bag and ring up their own products by themselves instead of the worker doing it. All of these are good because they all benefit the customers. These can also be bad because there can be a lot of technical issues with the pickup orders, delivery order, and the self-check outs and nobody wants to deal with errors like these.

For calculability, throughout all the articles and commercials, Walmart continues to let their customers know that they offer low prices and therefore you’ll be able to live better because of them. Their prices and all of the services that they offer fall under the calculability category. I find this as a good strategy because this is how they bring their customers in, by telling them what they want to hear. By letting them in on all of discounts, low prices, memberships, and more. However, this isn’t good because everybody has a different expectation of a “low price” and most of the time the prices aren’t really all that low and the discounts aren’t always up to date. This can make some customers angry and might not return. When it comes to predictability, Walmart is very predictable. Every Walmart has the same store layout, store design, same services offered, and carry the same products. This is good because if one Walmart were to have anything different then it wouldn’t be fair for the other ones to not have the same thing. For example, in Mexico, Walmart is actually “Wal-Mex” and in the United Kingdom it’s, “ASDA” (Ritzer and Miles). They have different names but everything else is still the same so people are aware when they hear these names they think about Walmart. For the control dimension, Walmart deals with a lot of technology in their organization. All of the products that are shipped to all of the Walmart's are pre-packaged and are ready to be put into their designated place in the stores. These organizations have the self-checkout areas where the customer does all of the work by scanning their items and then purchasing them right after. Then there are the other check out areas where workers are actually doing the work. But overall, all the employees and the customers have to do is just push buttons and the computers do all of the work. This is helpful in a way to both the customer and the employee to make things easy and quick. But this is also a problem because since we are now in 2021, technology will just

advance in the mere future and next thing you know, humans won’t be needed to do any kind of labor and there’ll be nothing computers. I personally think that McDonaldization makes Walmart operate better. With the number of self-checkout lanes, the lanes with the employees helping out the customers, the services offered, and more, it makes people want to continue coming back. For irrationality of rationality, meaning all the positive things of a system turn out to be negative in ways. The concept of irrationality of rationality is basically when the systems in an organization that are meant to be rational or sensible, turn out to be irrational or unreasonable (people.vcu.edu). This concept can be seen every now and then in Walmart. Sometimes with the curbside pick-up service they offer, people have trouble getting their orders because the systems are down and people have to either wait the next day to get their orders or go inside the store to go get their items themselves. German philosopher, Karl Marx, believed that if an employee were to continuously do the same thing at their job could lead to alienation. “Marx believed that completing the same monotonous and automatic job over and over (such as on an assembly line) can lead to alienation” (Parker1). Honestly, with how everything is now in society, if people were to keep basing their actions on rationality, then we’ll lead to Weber’s concept, the “Iron Cage” (Woods). But we can’t really help this because we are supposed to go with what the law tells us so most people can’t help but to make rationalized decisions so we won’t have to deal with the consequences. With our current society, yes, I do see McDonaldization as a positive mainly because of how things are somewhat convenient. I wouldn’t say that things are that easy to get but it’s easy enough these days. People look forward to getting things quickly and being in and out of places with ease. For example, whenever I would go to Walmart, I plan on getting whatever few things

are on my list and heading right out. I don’t stop to talk to anyone or anything, once I step foot inside of Walmart, I only have one mission. McDonaldization is beneficial for my own social experiences. Whenever I would go to Walmart with my family, this is our way of bonding. We converse among each other about what we might need or what we want and other products and services throughout the organization.

Resources:

Mcdonaldization, www.cpp.edu/~ddwills/courses/ant352/readings352/McDonaldization.htm. Parker1, Morgan. “Marx and Ritzer – THE McDonaldization of Society.” The Meat and Potatoes, 8 Oct. 2014, themeatandpotatoess.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/marx-and-ritzerthe-mcdonaldization-of-society/.

Ritzer, George, and Steven Miles. “The Changing Nature of Consumption and the Intensification OF MCDONALDIZATION in the Digital Age - George RITZER, Steven Miles, 2019.” SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1469540518818628.

Woods, Krystal. “Theory? Our Society? Finding EXPLANATIONS. – KRYSTAL WOODS.” Theory Our Society Finding Explanations Krystal Woods, 11 Sept. 2014, rampages.us/krystalwoods/2014/09/11/weber-and-the-iron-cage/.

Cole, Nicki Lisa. “What Does Weber's Iron Cage Have to Do with Climate Change?” ThoughtCo, www.thoughtco.com/understanding-max-webers-iron-cage-3026373....