The hybridization of American fast food McDonald’s in Italy

Abstract

The story of McDonald’s started in 1948, when two brothers in California created a new concept for the fast- food restaurant. This new type of business under the guide of Ray Kroc diffused in most countries of the world.

The rapid success was given by different factors as an extensive marketing campaign, a well-designed franchise system, and an efficient production. Over the years McDonald’s has become the symbol of American imperialism, mass consumption and standardization. The expansion all over the world has not been without problems. Even if the chain has tried to localize at best its outlets, when the McDonald’s opened in 1986 the biggest fast-food restaurant of that time in Italy, in Piazza di Spagna, many forms of oppositions had grown. This study will try to analyse the reasons behind the low process of development of McDonald’s in Italy by keeping as main references the studies done by Emanuela Scarpellini and Victoria de Grazia on the influence of the American way of life on the Italian culture. For analysing the reactions to the opening of McDonald’s in Rome and for understanding how these reactions might have influenced the strategy of the brand in Italy in the following years, more than 50 newspaper articles which appeared on the most important Italian newspapers and magazines were collected. From this analysis emerge that there was an ambivalent attitude toward the American model spread by the global chain and McDonald’s needed to undertake a process of “Italianization” to be accepted by the Italian consumers. Nonetheless, other social movements diffused over the years as Slow Food or thesis as the McDonaldization of society developed by the sociologist George Ritzer, which sustains that the principles of fast food are dominating most sectors of the society, demonstrate that the debate on the negative influence of McDonald’s on local culture is still open and necessitate further investigations.