Now, we can examine popular services.
We have discussed so far relatively upscale services such as sushi and French restaurants.
We saw that customers are tested; less "service" is provided; relaxation is combined with tension, etc.
But how about popular services?
Does the concept of struggle apply to such services?
You might have experienced the coffee shops that have been quite popular worldwide.
Some of these shops have obscure names of the cup sizes.
That is to say, [a] small one is called short and the next one is called tall.
Why do you call cups short and tall instead of small and large?
Then, there are even bigger cups.
The next one is called grande, and the larger one is venti.
These are not even English words.
There are some other obscure names on the menu like these, which I cannot even properly spell out.
The casual Italian restaurant that we studied in Japan also used obscure names on their menu
like Pizza Melanzane and Pizza Salsiccia Piccante.
Most of us, non Italians, do not understand what these mean.
An important question is this: Why do they put such obscure names?
We already know the answer.
These names need to be obscure.
They cannot be easy and familiar.
How about McDonald’s?
It is often said that McDonald’s is accessible to anybody, easy, and friendly.
Anyone can come and receive the same service consistently.
So, is McDonald’s an exception to what we have been discussing?
Not so fast.
What was the initial encounter with McDonald’s?
We can here draw on Professor Kincheloe’s description of his own encounter with McDonald’s.
He was from the mountain region of Tennessee, which he characterized as a premodern, traditional community.
He wrote, "McDonald’s helped shape my evolving identity and eventual entrance into the modern …
America of the middle and late 1960s."
Entering McDonald’s meant entering the modernity.
McDonald's symbolized modernity for those who had "love-hate relationship" with the premodern culture.
The relationship with the premodern culture was love-hate
because people like Professor Kincheloe grew up and therefore found the culture familiar
although they disliked the traditional values.
He wrote, "My original view had been constructed by the struggle to come to terms with the embarrassment of my origins in light of McDonald's:
It represented the modernist validation I sought."
Although he then began to keep distance from McDonald’s and eventually criticized its marketing strategies,
we can clearly see the contentious nature of the initial encounter.
Going to McDonald’s was a struggle to prove oneself when one’s own culture is negated.
You may say that McDonald’s had soon become familiar to most people
and such an contentious encounter happened only in the early days.
I would suggest that many people had a similar experience
as a small child to go to McDonald’s for the first time anxiously.
McDonald’s in fact targets small children quite effectively.
Scholars often suggest that McDonald’s was successful because of its efficient, standardized and predictable services.
Yet, McDonald’s real success was the fact that it constructed and symbolized a new culture that negated people.
Popular services also involve intersubjective struggles.
Certainly, struggles are more salient in expensive services that are connected to the elite aesthetic.
But as long as value is co-created,
customers are implicated in the service and their values are also an issue.
They need to prove themselves.
Customers cannot maintain the safe distance from the service.
We cannot separate subject from object.