The "McDonaldisation" Of The World

Stores are already marking products down two weeks before Thanksgiving and the consumer thinks this is great... it's not.

It's a habit stores have gotten themselves into, and in as much as one can never say never, they'll never get out of it. The capacity to produce has outweighed the capacity to consume for a long time and will continue to. Instead of working at being better merchants, retailers have worked at squeezing the suppliers and thus doing business by accounting. The supplier therefore works at figuring out how to produce cheaper merchandise, and neither side spends time on bringing to the consumer an attractive garment... just what can be perceived as an attractive bargain as cheaply as possible, clearly limiting quality and design.

One would think that the edge, the advantage, would then go to the designer designing beautiful products...it doesn't. The consumer's taste level has been watered down over the years because uninspiring products end up in stores in order to meet price requirements. So much so that the recognition of better, superior, of higher quality and design integrity in products needs to be relearned. One may come to believe that they are being served a hamburger at McDonalds because that is what they've called it for generations now, but it doesn't mean that it has anything to do with a real hamburger.

Undoing the "McDonaldisation" of the world at this point would be like squeezing toothpaste back into the tube. Beautifully designed and manufactured garments will continue to become a rarity.