Just five one-hundredths of an inch thick, light golden in color and with a perfect “saddle curl,” the Lay’s potato chip seems an unlikely weapon for global domination. But its maker, Frito-Lay, thinks otherwise.” Potato chips are a snack food for the world,” said  Salman Amin, the company’s head of global marketing. Amin believes there is no corner of the world that can resist the charms of a Frito-Lay potato chip.
    Frito-Lay is the biggest snack maker in America. owned by PepsiCo. And accounts for over half of the parent company’s $3 billion annual profits. But the U.S. snack food market is largely saturated, and to grow, the company has to look overseas.
    Its strategy rests on two beliefs: first, a global product offers economies of scale with which local brands cannot compete, and second, consumers in the 21st century are drawn to “global” as a concept. “Global” does not mean products that are consciously identified as American, but ones than consumers-especially young people-see as part of a modern, innovative (创新的) world in which people are linked across cultures by shared beliefs and tastes. Potato chips are an American invention, but most Chinese, for instance, do not know than Frito-Lay is an American company. Instead, Riskey, the company’s research and development head, would hope they associate the brand with the new world of global communications and business.
    With brand perception a crucial factor, Riskey ordered a redesign of the Frito-Lay logo (标识).The logo, along with the company’s long-held marketing image of the “irresistibility” of its chips. would help facilitate the company’s global expansion.
    The executives acknowledge that they try to swing national eating habits to a food created in America, but they deny that amounts to economic imperialism. Rater, they see Frito-Lay as spreading the benefits of free enterprise across the world. “We’re making products in those countries, we’re adapting them to the tastes of those countries, building businesses and employing people and changing lives,” said Steve Reinemund, PepsiCo’s chief executive.