Word: mcdonaldization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...determine whether Starbucks and McDonald's customers are the same or different species, I turned to Hitwise data. With the assumption that I'd glean some information about each camp's patronage by investigating who visited the fast-food chains' respective websites, I compared their demographics. Here's what I found. Visitors to Starbucks.com skew female: Starbucks' website has 8.3% more female visitors than does the McDonald's site. While McDonalds.com visitors cluster in the 18-to-34 age range, Starbucks owns the 35-to-44-year-old group. There's also a clear income gap between the two: McDonald...
...further depth to the profiles, I used Mosaic, a system that divides the U.S. into 50 different behavioral groups, to figure out which segments of our society visit the two websites. I identified the strongest Starbucks and McDonald's types: For Starbucks, it's segment B03, the Urban Commuter Family, described as "college-educated households containing dual income couples." These folks favor golfing as their exercise of choice. The segment that visits McDonald's is type J03, the Struggling City Centers, described as "lower-income households living in city neighborhoods in the South...
...small, elite segment of the country; now, its visitors pervade many more segments across America. But, as I finish my latte, I still can't fully envision the collision of these two worlds. Just imagine one of those annoyingly finicky coffee-orderers requesting a burger just-so at McDonald's: "I'll have a grande, extra hot Big Mac with one pump ketchup." It just doesn't seem...
...dishes they've perfected over centuries: carbonara or cassoulet. And it's amazing to eat in those towns, or to down tapas at a stall in the middle of the Bouqueria farmers' market in Barcelona. But those villagers are just luckier versions of people who eat at their local McDonald's every day. I want the world to come to me, to see it shrink so small it fits on my plate. I want Maine lobster in broth flavored with Spanish saffron. I want Alaskan salmon, truffles from Europe, a bottle of Beaujolais, a damn pineapple. And I want them...
...October, Amazon.com introduced a vinyl-only store and increased its selection to 150,000 titles across 20 genres. Its biggest sellers? Alternative rock, followed by classic rock albums. "I'm not saying vinyl will become a mainstream format, just like gourmet eating is not going to take over from McDonald's," says Michael Fremer, senior contributing editor at Stereophile. "But there is a growing group of people who are going back to a high-resolution format." Here are some of the reasons they're doing it and why you might want to consider...