McDonald’s, synonymous with globalization in most regions of the world, came to ubiquity through their need to develop new, unsaturated markets. Most shockingly, they were the first to build anything in the small town of Plauen, Germany after the reunification of the east and west blocs. This seems typical, however, of McDonald’s drive to reach every available market, as they increased the number of restaurants outside the united states by twelve thousand (to fifteen thousand) in a period of ten years. It seems that international franchising not only opens the market to their father corporation, but rather to the idea of globalized service and goods. Exemplary of this is Turkey, where McDonald’s opened their first restaurant in the absence of any other foreign franchise. Today, Turkey is familiar with 7-Eleven, Re/Max Real Estate and other franchises that were typically only found in America. Concerns about the influence international corporations have on foreign countries is not overblown; McDonald’s began teaching Indian farmer how to grow iceberg lettuce 7 years before opening a restaurant in India, and Den Fujita, the man who brought McDonald’s to Japan, has promoted McDonald’s by promising that through consumption, “we the Japanese will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be blond.” The export of both cultural values and agricultural/livestock cultivation are intrinsic aspects of global franchising.
