Americanization - American Business and Brands

American Business and Brands

Of the top ten global brands, seven are based in the United States. Coca-Cola, which holds the top spot, is often viewed as a symbol of Americanization, and has vending machines in over 200 countries worldwide. Fast food is also often viewed as being a symbol of U.S. marketing dominance. Companies such as Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Domino's Pizza among others have numerous outlets around the world.

Many of the world's biggest computer companies are also U.S. based, such as Microsoft, Apple, Dell and IBM, and much of the software bought worldwide is created by U.S. based companies. Carayannis and Campbell note that "The USA occupies, also in global terms, a very strong position in the software sector."

In Germany in the 1920s, the American efficiency movement was called "rationalization" and it was a powerful social and economic force. In part it looked explicitly at American models, especially Fordism. "Rationalization" meant higher productivity and greater efficiency, promising science would bring prosperity. More generally it promised a new level of modernity and was applied to economic production and consumption as well as public administration. Various versions of rationalization were promoted by industrialists and social democrats, by engineers and architects, by educators and academics, by middle class feminists and social workers, by government officials and politicians of many parties. As ideology and practice, rationalization challenged and transformed not only machines, factories, and vast business enterprises but also the lives of middle-class and working-class Germans.