Globalization and Burger King

Globalization is generally defined as a process of increasing interconnectedness among nations, cultures, and people, and is further supported and accelerated by technological developments. Within the digital world, globalization is essentially a digital convergence which includes the ability for greater production possible in poorer places. Additionally, the mobile phone infrastructure is expanding; however, the internet infrastructure still only occupies two-thirds of the world population, with many nations being marginalized.

Globalization is directly related to cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism is when cultural flow reflects imbalance in global power structure. This is demonstrated when global media flow is unequal in terms of direction and volume. Today, a small number of US or transnational conglomerates dominate global media flow. Within the last hundred years, the Western culture has been designed to help people become consumers. With this overbearing influence, all cultures become similarly Westernized and Americanized. As the remainder of the world becomes increasingly more modernized, many people lose their local, indigenous, or national culture, and additionally the people gradually lose their cultural autonomy and national sovereignty. In this increasingly globalized world, more and more cultures and people are becoming more modernized and connected. Although this may be viewed as a positive, many ancient and preserved cultures are finding it more difficult to maintain their integrity and avoid the corrupting influence of this modern world.

A media source that I feel is a paradigm of cultural imperialism is the "Whopper Virgins" campaign. The campaign included Burger King executives traveling abroad to segregated countries. They then had the locals try the Whopper sandwich. Overall, the crew traveled to Thailand, Romania and Greenland. All of the participants had never tried a whopper ever, and each person enjoyed the burger. Clearly, this is a blatant example of globalization and cultural imperialism because it involves people from the Western World, the US, throwing their culture among the isolated denizens of these foreign lands. However, the film crew's intentions were not to impose their culture among the citizens; rather, they merely wanted to introduce them to a food that they most likely have never sampled. After the people sampled the Whopper, the Burger King crew was shown trying the local's food, and expressed an appreciation and love for the indigenous food. Overall, the Burger King campaign demonstrates globalization and cultural imperialism of American culture among foreign nations.

http://www.whoppervirgins.com/