How Fast Food Influence Our Culture

  Have you ever heard of cultural imperialism? To answer the question, cultural imperialism is described as the economic, technological and cultural hegemony of modern nation and it provides the direction of social and economic to define cultural values.(Sarmela, 1977). In this digital era , instant worldwide communication and media proliferation has led to cultural imperialism. (Ketchum, 2016). As our local culture is not influential enough, other powerful culture could easily substitute our culture in terms of food, fashion, drama and music. Especially in the era of globalization, every piece of information could easily be spread with only a click of the mouse. Therefore, mass media such as television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisement may help to boost up the development of the different elements that were imported from another country.

  In fact, mass media often promotes western culture. Take an example, the fast food industry. Nowadays, American fast food seems to be the most well liked food in the world. In our country, we can easily find fast food restaurants almost everywhere like Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut and Burger King. Therefore, it raised the concern of whether western food culture will affect the local culture and the impact that underlie within this concern.

Time=Money??

 First of all, fast food is one of the culture that has become a trend for the majority of people in our country. They tend to consume fast food heavily in their daily life and thus it reflects certain American culture values in our lives. Firstly, the workers who works at fast food companies are high efficient in term of preparing and serving food. Meanwhile, it is not only save their precious time, but also offers a lot of convenience to the consumers such as provide delivery services and drive-thru services. Besides, as the saying goes, "Time waits for no man", therefore people tend to work in a fast-paced.  For instance, McDonald's tried to finish a combination of products in 50 seconds. (American Fast Food Culture Cultural Studies Essay, 2018). Their culture will affect us in the way of things should be done quickly and thus it will improve the efficiency and effectiveness in terms of academic and work performance. 

  In addition, some researchers views that the emotions are not only biologically decided, but environment and social are the factors that can influence it. Myers argued that "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors and conscious experience" are the basic elements of emotions. (Ekman, P. 1971). Therefore, cultural differences exist in some aspects of emotions and it is classified by the unique characteristics of individualist and collectivist cultures. According to research on Western culture or individualist culture, high arousal emotions are more valued and encouraged than low arousal emotions. 

   In Western culture, people try to influence others where high arousal emotions are ideal and effective. By contrast, in Eastern or collectivist culture, low arousal emotions are more valued  than high arousal emotions. Eastern people desire to experience low arousal emotions more than high arousal emotions. (Lim, 2016). They practice conformity and low arousal emotions work effectively as compared to high arousal emotions. Therefore, the western value which added to advertisement will easily influence and persuade Asian to conform to their culture norms and behave like how westerners practice in their daily life.

     Furthermore, consumption behavior is an important reason to express class position and cultural identity. People will express their social class from different perspectives such as education, occupation, income, social background and purchase buying decision. Sometimes, products can symbolize the social class of people. According to Bourdieu (1984), he mentioned that food preferences are the way to distinguish social class regarding food consumption and how it establishes a person's identity. (Tsao, 2012). Today, many people like to consume their meals at McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and other western restaurants. One of the reasons is because it can reflects a status symbol and it shows the social class of a person. 

      Moreover, the fast food companies have taken action to expand their business and transmit western ideologies into local culture. However, our locals think that fast food is not a proper meal and can be only considered as snacks. Therefore, they localize their products to suit the local tastes. For instance, Japan's McDonald's has introduced the Teriyaki burger made from pork. In addition, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) also offered a variety of dishes to cater the local tastes such as mashed potatoes, coleslaw and fried chicken. (Stern, 2010).

       Pertaining to the issues of localizing the product, we think that it is a good way to cater to demand for different people. Since at the beginning, most people cannot accept the western cuisines such as hamburgers and french fries. Hence, the company came out with other products such as chicken porridge. However, the influence of mass media is still powerful in affecting people's mind. 

      Other than that, fast food companies are implementing the phone application to ease the consumers in ordering food through online. The consumer can have a look of the menu at the company's website and directly order it by using the online application. Besides, it also enables the consumer to redeem points at every purchase since the points could be uses as a cash back promotion. Thus, it may build brand image and brand loyalty among the consumers and accomplish a long-term success.    

             Unlike the previous decade, most of the advertisements are limited to traditional media such as newspaper, magazine and radio only. Nowadays, people become so reliant on digital technology which leads to greater efficiency in their life. Wide coverage of Internet in our country can stimulate the marketer to allow the consumers expose to their advertisement. For instance, prosperity fast food advertisement can arouse consumer's emotional appeal and thus be able to attract them to consume fast food. Besides, most of the advertisement consists of call to action tools such as buy now or order now so that they can get direct responses from the consumer.

            Therefore, it has brought some positive and negative impact throughout the advancement of communication technology in the fast food industry. By this way, we can know that communication technology plays an important role in fast food industry. For example, McDonald's used the sales promotion such as discounts and coupons in their advertisement via Facebook and Youtube. When people look at the advertisement, it will grab their attention  and influence consumer purchasing behavior. Besides, the companies tend to use the communication technology to spread the information worldwide and people will become more dependent on the technology. For instance, they will use technology to order food online and are not required to go outside. 

           In the next 10 years, we predict that communication technology will become more advanced. Firstly, the labor will be replaced by robots, and it could be assumed that the level of productivity will extremely increasing because robots are more reliable than human and every action of robots are under control by people. Besides, robots do not have emotional feelings and will not be easily tired unlike human beings. Furthermore, human error can be reduced significantly. It can help to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the company. In the future, consumers do not even need to bring cash to consume the product whereas they can just scan their fingerprint to make the payment as all the information of consumers are stored and linked to their bank account. Thus, the payment will go through easily. 

           

Main References:

1.  American Fast Food Culture Cultural Studies Essay. (2015). UKEssays. Retrieved 1          February 2018, from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/cultural-studies/american  fast-food-culture-cultural-studies-essay.php 
2. Ekman, P. (1971). Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. In  Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska Press.
3. Ketchum, D. (2016). What Is the Meaning of Cultural Imperialism? Retrieved 30   January, 2018, from http://classroom.synonym.com/meaning-cultural imperialism-7841.html
4. Lim, N. (2016). Cultural differences in emotion: differences in emotional arousal level       between the East and the West. Integrative Medicine Research, 5(2), 105-109.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.imr.2016.03.004
5. Sarmela, M. (1977). What Is Cultural Imperialism? Retrieved 31 January, 2018            from http://www.kotikone.fi/matti.sarmela/culturimperialism.pdf
6. Stern, S. (2010). Fast-food chains adapt to local tastes - CNN.com. Edition.cnn.com.          Retrieved 31 January 2018, from      http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/homestyle/04/08/fast.food/index.html
7. Tsao, J. C. (2012). From a Full Value ECU to a Constant ECU. A taste of culture: perception about American Fast Food in China, 1-50. doi:10.1007/978-1-349- 09730-2_11

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