I can only address one aspect of your question, the expansion of the ubiquity of the refrigerator into Europe. There is quite a good book that covers this, in part. Unfortunately I'm on holiday and mobile so I don't have access to my copy, but it is called 'Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe' by Victoria de Grazia. She writes about the Americanisation of Europe through domestic cultural life. Here is a review of her book: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10921

Specifically addressing the refrigerator, we can look at what de Grazia calls "'the standard of living'--a concept whose alternative definitions in the United States and Europe reveal profound divergences over the nature of work, productivity, leisure, and class". Here she is looking mostly at the post-war boom of industrialisation in the style of Henry Ford, where it was believed that production's 'self-interest lay in providing workers not simply the bare minimum, but a standard of living that was sufficiently high to transform their habits and tastes'. The more a worker makes, the more they can afford a high ticket luxury item like a fridge, thus creating a cultural and 'social mobility through standardization, mass production, and distribution, the masses could gain access to the luxuries once reserved for the elites'. Add into the mix the Marshall plan pouring in resources to war-ravaged Europe and the Cold War context for trying to make European democratic markets and systems, and we can see how the concept of a modern refrigerator unit could be a symbolic representation of modernity and Americanisation within the domestic home space. It is no coincidence that this was also the period when the concept of the supermarket hit Europe, an American import that goes hand and hand with requiring a home refrigeration system as shopping would/could now be for more than one day's worth of meals.

I'll let an Americanist tackle the heart of your question, but it is interesting to note that in Europe home refrigerators remain quite small compared to the 'standard' fridge sizes we see in the U.S.

On a related note, when did the icebox (meaning, the non-mechanical version of the modern refrigerator that was loaded with actual ice) fall out of fashion? I recently moved into an apartment that was build in 1920 and it has one built in. I had never seen one before, and as far as I know there are no longer icemen who make house calls. What happened to the ice industry after the rise of the mechanical refrigerator? Did it die, or was there some burgeoning commercial demand that allowed it to shift focus?

This piece goes into the effects of consumer durables like fridges and such. I originally came across it in 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism where Ha-Joon Chang argues that the washing machine had a bigger impact on society than the invention of the internet and I'm inclined to agree.

Engines of Liberation (in PDF format): https://www.google.ie/url?q=http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/papers/engines.pdf&sa=U&ved=0CAsQFjAAahUKEwjNyojEqbfHAhUuOdsKHVf0DL0&usg=AFQjCNGZ9uYlkcYAmzJzvnFXPGRfIr6jvg