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A History of Marketing Thought

January 2002

In book: Handbook of Marketing (pp.39-65)
Publisher: Sage Publications
Editors: Barton A. Weitz and Robin Wensley

Authors:

Eric H. Shaw

Florida Atlantic University

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Content may be subject to copyright.

INTRODUCTION

This section considers the nature of historical

research in marketing, why this research should

matter to marketing scholars, the various approaches

to studying the history of marketing thought, and the

organization of this chapter.

Historical Research in Marketing

Marketing historians have generally followed the

tradition long held by economists, which is to sepa-

rate the history of practice from the history of

thought and to focus their studies on one or the

other. Thus, historical research in marketing divides

roughly into marketing history and the history of

marketing thought. It is the latter we are reviewing

in this chapter. Of course, as Stanley Hollander once

observed, ‘practice is not entirely thoughtless and

thought is often practice-driven’ (1989, p. xx). Some

of the research reviewed herein examines marketing

history together with marketing thought and, as we

point out at the end of the chapter, more of this

would be desirable. We have also restricted our

review primarily to historical research by marketing

scholars publishing in the literature intended for a

marketing audience. We do not directly review liter-

ature dealing with historiography, but for the inter-

ested reader there is a growing body of work

describing the methods of historical scholarship in

marketing (e.g., Brown et al., 2001; Golder, 2000;

Jones, 1993; Nevett, 1991; Savitt, 1980; Smith and

Lux, 1993; Stern, 1990; Witkowski, 1993).

The practice of marketing is quite ancient and as

long as thoughtful individuals have reflected on

marketing behavior, there has been marketing

thought. For example, early sections of this chapter

examine the ideas about markets, marketing and

marketers of Greek philosophers such as Plato and

Aristotle. However, the formal study of marketing is

of much more recent origin. As a subject taught in

universities, studied and written about in a system-

atic, scholarly way, the marketing discipline has

existed for only about 100 years. Interestingly, when

such scholarship emerged during the early twentieth

century, history was a prominent part of what

marketing professors studied and taught – a quality

we have since lost.

Why History Matters to Marketing

The classic justification for history is that those who

don’t know their past are doomed to repeat its mis-

takes. Ideas or concepts that have not worked or

have not proven useful should be discarded. This

appears self-evident. However, knowledge of

history can also help us to avoid repeating its suc-

cesses! This is the re-inventing-the-wheel phenome-

non. One example well known to marketing

historians is the reincarnation of the marketing

concept, first as relationship marketing, and then as

customer relationship management (CRM). Even if

it is only a marginal change in the broader concept,

with each new generation of terminology there

seems to be no recognition that the basic idea has

remained the same. As Mark Twain has been cred-

ited with observing, history may not repeat itself,

but it often rhymes. When it does, variations on a

theme should be recognized for what they are.

That brings us to a second value in studying

history. It establishes a baseline for recognizing

changes in theory. How can we advance our know-

ledge of marketing if we have no prior knowledge?

A History of Marketing Thought

D.G. BRIAN JONES and ERIC H. SHAW

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INTRODUCTION40

In a sense, this is the purpose served by a literature

review. The problem is that far too many literature

reviews only go back as far as the researcher can

personally remember because, as many faculty

tongue-in-cheek state, ‘if it occurred before my

Ph.D. it’s ancient history,’ or as one presenter at a

recent marketing history conference suggested, ‘if it

happened during my lifetime it isn’t history!’

Closely related to its value in serving as a baseline

for recognizing change, history also helps us to

frame the right questions to ask in teaching and

research. A review of previous research on an idea

or issue allows us to identify what has been previ-

ously studied and how extensively, which are the

unanswered questions, and which are the unques-

tioned answers.

Perhaps the most practical value of history for

students of marketing comes from its unique ability

to provide a framework for building and integrating

knowledge. Nowhere is this more apparent than in

the work of Robert Bartels. His seminal study of the

development of marketing thought, published in

three editions (1962, 1976, 1988), provides us with

one of the most comprehensive overviews of the

development of marketing as a discipline during the

past 100 years. At the same time, it gives us an intro-

spective look at our discipline.

In addition to its practical value, history can be a

thing of beauty. It is valuable for its own sake. It is

a story worth telling. It adds perspective, richness,

and context to marketing ideas. And, it gives us an

intellectual heritage and sense of origin. It is difficult

to understand how any serious student of marketing

can possibly not be curious about what has changed

and what has remained constant over the century of

our discipline’s existence.

Approaches to the History

of Marketing Thought

There have been several different approaches used,

separately or together, to study the history of

marketing thought. Perhaps the most obvious and rele-

vant approach is the study of ideas or concepts. The

simplest version of this is a literature review where an

author traces previous work on the topic or idea in

question. This chapter might be considered as an

example. Strictly speaking, however, few historians

would consider such reviews as history. A better

example is provided by the historical studies done

by Hollander (1986) and Fullerton (1988) of the

marketing concept, or by Shaw (1994) of the four

utilities concept.

A second approach, one that might be considered

a natural extension of the study of ideas or concepts,

is to study schools of marketing thought. Now called

the traditional approaches to marketing thought, by

1930 three such schools had emerged: functional,

commodity, and institutional, and a good deal of his-

torical research has involved those schools of

thought. More recently, Sheth et al. (1988) have

identified and examined the evolution through the

twentieth century of 12 schools of marketing

thought, including the three traditional ones.

Perhaps the earliest approach to studying the

history of marketing thought, one that continues to

have relevance and popularity, is a marketing disci-

pline approach. Disciplinary studies refer to the

history of the associations, organizations, and jour-

nals, identified with the marketing discipline. For

example, as journals in marketing have reached

milestones in their history, historical accounts of

their development have been written (e.g.,

Berkman, 1992; Grether, 1976; Kerin, 1996;

Muncy, 1991).

As an approach to the history of marketing

thought, biography has been used to trace the con-

tributions of pioneer scholars in the marketing dis-

cipline. This approach began during the 1950s and

continues today. Between 1956 and 1962, the

Journal of Marketing published a series of 23 bio-

graphical sketches that seemed to establish a tradi-

tion continued by Converse (1959), Bartels (1962,

1988), Hollander (1995), Jones (1994), and others.

Often, biography is applied in combination with

other approaches, as it was by Bartels (1988).

Organization of the Chapter

Naturally enough, this review of historical research

on marketing thought proceeds chronologically,

beginning with studies of the marketing ideas of

ancient scholars through medieval times to the

industrial revolution. Those earlier ideas about mar-

keting began to crystallize in the writings of econo-

mists during the late nineteenth century. Most

historical research has focused on developments

during the twentieth century, which we have

divided into two broad eras. The first, from 1900 to

1957, deals with the emergence of the marketing

discipline. This was a time during which the first

university courses were offered, the first textbooks

were written, the traditional schools of thought

emerged, and so on. With the publication of Wroe

Alderson’s (1957) Marketing Behavior and

Executive Action, the modern era of marketing

began. This more recent era has seen a proliferation

of schools of thought (e.g., marketing management,

consumer behavior, macromarketing), and with it a

dramatic increase in historical study. In the final

section of the chapter we reflect on the current

status of historical research on marketing thought

and make some suggestions about what research

needs to be done.

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A HISTORY OF MARKETING THOUGHT 41

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL

MARKETING THOUGHT

The birth of trade has disappeared in the mist of

time, but the archeological evidence for trading goes

back more than 10,000 years (Dixon et al., 1968).

Trading continued for many millennia in a rudimen-

tary form of barter known as the silent trade,

first noted by Herodotus ([fifth century BCE]

de Selincourt, 1972: 336), the Father of History.

Barter in any form is relatively primitive and, as

necessity is often the mother of invention, with the

growth of civilization a more sophisticated trading

mechanism emerged – marketing.

The earliest historical statement about the origin

of marketing activity was made by Herodotus

(de Selincourt, 1972: 80): ‘The Lydians were the

first people we know of to use a gold and silver

coinage and to introduce the retail trade.’ Marketing,

in the sense of selling and buying, originated in the

seventh century BCE, in Asia Minor (now modern

Turkey). Because marketing was so much more effi-

cient than barter, it quickly spread to neighboring

Greek cities along the Mediterranean, and then

rapidly diffused throughout the civilized world.

Marketing represented a strange new form of

behavior. Emphasizing individual gain and compe-

tition, marketing activity appeared detrimental to

maintaining the social bonds uniting the members

of societies traditionally based on altruism and

cooperation. During a famine, the socially accept-

able thing to do was share the plight of one’s neigh-

bors, but marketers were more likely to raise prices.

Deep thinkers of the time, such as the Socratic

philosophers (fourth century BCE), were concerned

with how this newly emerging, rapidly growing,

form of human behavior would affect the social

order. Their discussions represented the earliest

thinking about marketing from the social perspec-

tive, what is now termed macromarketing thought.

After the fall of Rome, marketing thought was

developed largely by the medieval scholars, from

St. Augustine of Hippo (fifth century CE) to

St. Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century), then by a

variety of Enlightenment philosophers and scholars,

leading to the early economists.

Some of the earliest writers discussing the history

of ancient and medieval thought in the marketing

literature include Cassels (1936), Kelley (1956),

Steiner (1978) and Dixon (1979a). Cassels (1936),

an economist by training, was probably invited to

introduce the origins of marketing thought to the

marketing discipline in the newly published Journal

of Marketing. Laying the groundwork, Cassels

noted that the central reason for studying the histori-

cal development of marketing thought was to shed

light on a current question:

the amount of systematic study given to [marketing]

problems has increased tremendously since the begin-

ning of the present century; but the great central

problem of marketing, the problem of carrying on effi-

ciently from the social point of view this final stage in the

general production process, has remained essentially the

same since it was so intelligently discussed by Plato

twenty-three hundred years ago. (1936: 129, italics

added)

Unfortunately, Cassels did not methodically discuss

Plato’s explanation of the efficiency of the market-

ing system. Yet Plato provided a systematic frame-

work for discussing macromarketing thought that

has been followed (knowingly or unknowingly) by

almost every thinker since. Although the terms are

modern, the concepts are Plato’s, stated simply and

succinctly:

In summary, Plato has shown that because people are

not self-sufficient societies evolve to satisfy human

needs. Since individuals have different skills, their com-

parative advantages lead to a division of labor, which

results in increased efficiency in production. The divi-

sion of labor, however, also results in a separation of

producers and consumers. To bridge this gap, market

exchange – selling and buying – is necessary. The

exchange process requires work, work takes time, and

time has an opportunity cost. Hence, marketing interme-

diaries emerge because of their increased efficiency in

market exchange. (Shaw, 1995: 10)

Attempting to provide a relatively balanced treat-

ment of the views of the Socratic philosophers,

Cassels noted ‘the views of Aristotle on marketing

are strikingly at variance with those of Plato.’

However, their differences in viewpoint are due less

to their actual arguments than to Cassels selectively

choosing comments attributed to each. For example,

Cassels’ (1936: 130) greatly exaggerated ‘the views

of Aristotle [toward marketers] as useless profiteer-

ing parasites.’

On the other hand, Cassels astutely attributed

Plato’s view of middlemen as ‘unsuited to more

strenuous occupations’ to his recognition of the

importance of comparative advantage in the division

of labor, with a contrary view proposed by Adam

Smith:

Plato … recognized the existence of innate differences

between individuals and attached much importance to

the advantage of fitting people into the occupations for

which their ‘natural gifts’ best suited them, whereas

Smith, writing in an era of revolutionary democracy and

liberalism, accepted the general view that men were

born equal and was obliged, therefore, to develop an

explanation of division of labor in which ‘natural gifts’

play no part at all. (Cassels, 1936: 130)

Cassels’ observation is particularly noteworthy,

because subsequent writers (e.g., Kelley, 1956;

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Steiner, 1978) regarded Plato’s views as no less

hostile than those of Aristotle. For example, both

Kelley and Steiner mistakenly attributed Plato’s

concern with comparative advantage to hostility,

even prejudice, against middlemen.

Tracing the favorable and unfavorable views of

trade in the early and medieval Christian church

Cassels compared viewpoints ranging from the

simple, e.g., Cassiodorus, who preached that ‘he who

in trading sells a thing for more than he paid for it

must have paid for it less than it was worth or must be

selling it for more than it is worth’ Cassels, 1936: 130

to the perceptive, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, who

argued that a trader may sell for a higher price

‘either because the price has changed with a change

of place or time, or because of the risk he takes in

transporting the thing from one place to another’

(p. 131), anticipating place (and possibly time and

possession) utility in what is now termed the four

utilities concept.

Cassels also commented on a few early British

philosophers who held favorable opinions of mar-

keting, including Thomas Mun and David Hume, as

well as a couple of French Physiocrats, whom he

said did not, including A.R.J. Turgot and Richard

Cantillion. The problem with Cassels’ work is that,

lacking a framework to organize marketing thought,

only a few favorable and unfavorable comments by

historically noteworthy writers are offered. They are

interesting as historical facts, but they do not

advance our knowledge of marketing thought very

far. Based on his observation that ‘it is widely recog-

nized’ that ‘pure competition’ is lacking in market-

ing, ‘even where the number of middlemen in the

market is large and the rivalry between them … keen,

their policies may nevertheless be non-aggressive,’

Cassels concluded ‘the system as a whole may be

wastefully inefficient from a social point of view’

(1936: 133). Thus, Cassels subjected himself to the

same type of criticism Kelley and Steiner make about

other historical figures who ‘denigrate’ marketing.

In contrast to Cassels, who at least sought to pro-

vide a balanced perspective, Kelley’s (1956) study

focused exclusively on unfavorable views of

marketing to support the position ‘when we go back

into early history we find that the trader was not well

regarded by society’ (p. 62). Similarly, Steiner

(1978: 2) took the same position: ‘The prejudice

against marketing and marketers is of ancient

origin.’ As evidence for this notion of bias, both

Kelley and Steiner started with Plato’s comment

about marketing being delegated to those people

‘weakest in bodily strength,’ leading both to con-

clude: ‘The marketer … was considered a rather

immoral person by nature and his status was low

indeed’ (Kelley, 1956: 62). This was not bias, how-

ever; it was a logically thought-out position. The

weak were more suited to sitting in the marketplace,

exchanging goods for money, which does not

require heavy lifting, rather than toiling in the fields

or performing hard labor. As Cassels noted above,

Plato placed great significance on a division of labor

based on comparative advantage.

Kelley (1956) based his arguments for bias on the

eighteenth-century Physiocratic philosophers’ posi-

tion ‘that all value was thought to come from the

land’ (1956: 62); consequently, agriculture ranked

higher (provided greater value) than manufacture,

and manufacturing ranked higher than trade. Steiner

(1978: 5) also linked this notion to the now discredi-

ted Marxian theory of value, ‘Already in the minute

when the commodity is finished, before it leaves the

hands of its first vendor, it must be worth as much as

the final purchaser, i.e., the consumer, pays for it in

the end.’ Steiner’s main argument for prejudice

rested on the four utilities concept that was devel-

oped by nineteenth-century American Institutional

economists and refined by marketing academics of

the twentieth century (Shaw, 1994). According to

Steiner: ‘By the prejudice against marketing we

mean an attitude that denigrates the economic role of

the three marketing utilities [time, place and posses-

sion] and magnifies the importance of form utility’

(1976: 2). This was an argument often invoked by

twentieth-century marketing pioneers to justify the

idea that marketing, like agriculture and manufac-

turing, provides value.

There is one point on which these two writers

diverge, when the bias against marketing ended.

Kelley (1956: 67) believed that ‘by the early part of

the twentieth century, most of the community

accepted [marketing] as useful and necessary,’

although early marketing academics up to almost the

mid-twentieth century found themselves defending

marketing against the popular criticism of ‘high

costs, wastes, and inefficiency’ (Bartels, 1988).

Alternatively, Steiner (1978: 2) suggested that ‘the

prejudice against marketing … is a presence very

much to be reckoned with today.’ Although with the

advent of non-profit marketing, social, political,

religious and charitable causes seem quite comfort-

able embracing modern marketing techniques.

The most comprehensive and exhaustive treat-

ment of the history of marketing thought prior to the

twentieth-century is found in the works of Dixon

(1978, 1979a, 1979b, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1991). One

article in particular (1979a) refuted the bias issue

raised by Kelley and Steiner. Using Ambrose’s defi-

nition of prejudice as ‘a vagrant opinion without

visible means of support’ (1979a: 39), Dixon argued

that the Greek philosophers, medieval schoolmen

and many subsequent scholars ignored in the litera-

ture, offered well-reasoned arguments for their opin-

ions of marketing. To present his case Dixon used a

cost–benefit framework. On the social benefits side,

he pointed out classical Greek philosophers argued

that marketing was not only useful to society, but it

was essential.

According to Plato, ‘The natural purpose for

which all retail trading comes into existence is not a

INTRODUCTION42

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loss, but precisely the opposite for how can any man

be anything but a benefactor if he renders even and

symmetrical the distribution of goods’ (1979a: 37).

According to Aristotle, ‘One of the essential activi-

ties of states is the buying and selling of goods to

meet their varying needs’ (p. 38). Consequently,

Dixon concluded that the ancient Greek philoso-

phers clearly recognized the importance of market-

ing and ‘The specialists who … do the work of

marketing have an important place in the system,

and perform socially beneficial work’ (1979: 38).

This classical analysis carried over to the church

fathers of the early medieval period, seeking to

understand under what conditions profit making was

morally justifiable. Early churchmen struggled with

the notion of profit making or the value added by

marketing, and Dixon (1979a) discussed the thinking

of several. For example, St. Jerome (fifth century)

believed marketing a zero-sum game, so ‘the seller’s

gain must be the buyer’s loss.’ Pope Leo argued

marketing was not sinful unless the profit was unrea-

sonable: ‘The nature of the gain either convicts or

excuses a man doing business, for there is a gain which

is honest another which is disgraceful’ (1979a: 38).

But a conceptual breakthrough was made by

St. Augustine, who distinguished between marketing

as an activity and the people who perform marketing.

By separating the two, he could focus on the nature

of marketing itself, rather than confound the issue

with honest or sinful marketers. St. Augustine, giv-

ing words to an imaginary merchant, makes the argu-

ment ‘I bring merchandise from afar’ to those places

in need. This is socially useful work, not without

risk; consequently, ‘I ask a wage for my labor, so that

I buy more cheaply than I sell.’ Profit is the wage,

because ‘the laborer is worthy of his hire’ (p. 38).

Thus, contrary to Steiner’s (1978: 3) assertion,

‘By the fall of the Roman Empire, the major foun-

dations of the anti-marketing bias had been sunk

deep into intellectual soil,’ Dixon reached a diamet-

rically opposite conclusion. According to Dixon

(1979a: 38), ‘Hence, by the fall of the Western

Roman Empire (c. 476), the best known of the early

church writers not only had demonstrated the mar-

keter made a social contribution by creating “place

utility” but he had also shown that the profit earned

represents nothing more than a wage paid for the

labor expended.’

Later medieval church fathers also recognized the

beneficial nature of marketing. Dixon cites several

examples:

Alexander of Hales (13th C.) remarks that trading is in

harmony with the law of nature. St. Thomas (13th C.)

says that ‘Buying and selling seem to be established for

the common advantage of both parties.’ … Duns Scotus

(14th C.) says that ‘Trade is necessary and useful for the

well being of society.’ Martin Luther (1524) remarks that

‘It cannot be denied that buying and selling are neces-

sary. They cannot be dispensed with. (Dixon, 1979a: 39)

Along with social benefits, there were also social

costs. Dixon contended that discussions of costs

should not be confused with hostility or prejudice

but with the logic of the cost–benefit analysis. For

example, he cited Plato, ‘Let us see wherein trade is

reputed to be … not respectable … in order that we

may remedy by law parts of it’ to show that Plato

wished to fix the illegal and immoral aspects of

retailing so that it ‘will benefit everyone, and do the

least possible injury to those in the state who prac-

tice it’ (1979a: 39–40).

Marketing had other social costs. It reduced a

state’s self-reliance and preparedness for war, as

well as encouraging foreign merchants with strange

customs. Dixon quoted St. Thomas Aquinas:

The State, which needs a number of merchants to main-

tain its subsistence, is liable to be injured in war through

a shortage of foods … Moreover, the influx of strangers

corrupts the morals of many of the citizens … whereas,

if the citizens themselves devote themselves to com-

merce, a door is open to many vices … the pursuit of a

merchant is as contrary as possible to military exertion.

For merchants abstain from labors and while they enjoy

the good things of life, they become soft in mind and

their bodies are rendered weak and unsuitable for mili-

tary exercises. (1979a: 40)

Steiner (1978: 2) stated, ‘An inevitable corollary of

the hostility toward marketing institutions and prac-

tices is the “rub-off ” to individuals engaged in them.

Marketers thus get portrayed as less worthwhile

persons than the honest farmer.’ Dixon argued the

contrary, however: the directionality of the causal

arrow should be reversed; sinful marketers were

corrupting the activity of marketing.

Dixon noted a variety of Greek and Roman writers

(e.g., Herodotus, Dionysius) who disapproved of

manual labor in general, not marketing in particular;

citing Cicero (first century BCE), as just one

example, ‘vulgar are the means of livelihood of

all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual

labor … Vulgar we must consider those also who

buy from wholesale merchants to retail immedia-

tely … and all mechanics [artisans and manufactur-

ers] are engaged in vulgar trades’ (1979a: 40).

Cicero also differentiated among types of marketing

based on the scale of operations: ‘Trade, if it is a

small scale [such as retail] is to be considered

vulgar; but if it is wholesale and on a large scale …

is not to be greatly disparaged’ (p. 40). There was no

bias against trade per se, but these writers were

mostly aristocrats, and having the leisure to think

and write they disdained all forms of manual labor.

The medieval churchmen, concerned with moral-

ity, condemned a variety of marketing practices as

sinful. Dixon (1979a: 41) cited several marketing

‘stratagems’ including ‘selling a different article for

more than was first bargained, hiding the fault of a

thing, as horse dealers do, and making a thing look

better than it is, as do cloth sellers who choose dim

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places to sell their cloth.’ Many all-to-common trade

practices, such as using false weights, hiding defects

in merchandise, and adulterating food, however,

were condemned in the earliest codified laws, back

to the Code of Hammurabi (eighteenth century BCE),

and such practices are also illegal today.

It was, however, clearly recognized that the fault

lay in the man, not the activity. As one of many

writers in the early literature, Dixon (1979a: 41)

cited Gower (fourteenth century): ‘There is a differ-

ence between the merchant whose thoughts are set

on deceit, and he whose day is spent in honest work,

both labor alike for gain, but one cannot be com-

pared with the other.’ Thus it is apparent that mar-

keting activity was not looked down upon because

of prejudice. The problem lay mostly with dishonest

marketers. As Plato stated: ‘The class of men is

small … who when assailed by wants and desires,

are able to hold out and observe moderation, and

when they might make a great deal of money are

sober in their wishes and prefer a moderate to a large

gain, but the mass of men are the very opposite’

(Kelley, 1956: 62). It was the concern with exces-

sive profits that was the issue. Marketers were vio-

lating the ‘golden mean’ – everything in moderation,

nothing in excess. They were confusing the means

(making money) with the ends (the good life). Thus,

Plato concluded, ‘If the best men were to follow the

retail trade, the latter would be an honored occupa-

tion’ (pp. 62–3). St. Augustine says much the same,

‘I do not approve of a covetous trader … but these

failings are in the man and not in his trade, which

can be carried out honestly’ (Dixon, 1979a: 42).

Because it dealt with money, there were few who

could avoid such temptation, and Plato recom-

mended limiting the number engaged in marketing

and assigning the work to those whose corruption

would cause society the least harm, namely resident

aliens. Again, this was not evidence of prejudice, but

the logic of his analysis. Medieval writers were con-

cerned with the same problem. Dixon (1979a: 42)

cited St. Cyprian’s criticism of churchmen, who

after ‘deserting the people … sought the market

places for gainful business … they wished to possess

money in abundance.’

Thus, from the earliest discussions of marketing

to the close of the medieval period, it is clear that

many scholars were seeking to understand the

impact of marketing on society. Their discussions

have contributed significantly to our knowledge.

The Socratic philosophers produced the earliest

framework that integrated marketing into society. It

was expanded and deepened by subsequent scholars.

During the medieval period church writers were

concerned with the morality of profit making,

because it caused marketers to fall into temptation.

Consequently, classical philosophers suggested laws

to moderate the excesses, and medieval churchmen

preached against greed. Throughout history thinking

about marketing has evolved through a distinguished

lineage of scholars who have enriched our heritage

of marketing thought.

ECONOMICS AND MARKETING THOUGHT

DURING THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Marketing historians agree that the discipline

emerged as a branch of applied economics at the

turn of the twentieth century (Bartels, 1988). There

is some variance of evidence and opinion, however,

about which economic ideas and schools of thought

were most influential. The late nineteenth century was

a time of division and debate among different eco-

nomic schools, especially in North America, and it

was from such diverse streams of economic thinking

that the study of marketing emerged in the academy.

One of the first detailed studies of this era was

Coolsen’s (1960) examination of the collected

works of four ‘selected empirical liberal econo-

mists,’ Edward Atkinson, David Wells, Arthur

Farquhar, and Henry Farquhar, writing in the US

between 1870 and 1900. Coolsen considered this a

time during which marketing emerged as an impor-

tant problem of modern capitalism, but just prior to

the emergence of marketing as a field of inquiry in

its own right. When marketing problems and issues

were considered, it was as part of the study of eco-

nomics. As was common at that time, these four

economists used the phrase ‘distribution of pro-

ducts’ instead of the term ‘marketing.’ Coolsen

made it clear that they did not intend, nor did they,

develop an organized body of marketing knowledge

(1958: 210). They did, however, provide a fairly

comprehensive view of the scope and importance of

marketing at that time. Their primary interest was in

promoting laissez-faire – a belief in free trade and

economic liberalism. They conducted studies of the

effects of changes in transportation on market size

and product availability, of credit and consumption,

of the relationship between the marketing of com-

modities and income distribution, and of the effects

of buying and selling on aggregate consumption. In

this way, their work had an unmistakable macro-

marketing focus, but it also highlighted the rela-

tively sophisticated marketing techniques of that

time period. Coolsen concluded that these four eco-

nomists did not have as much impact on the early

development of the ‘science’ of marketing as they

might otherwise have, because their discussions of

marketing were imprecise and somewhat vague, and

because they were neither academically trained nor

academically employed (1958: 215). As a result,

their influence on early students of marketing is

uncertain.

Shortly after Coolsen’s work, Bartels published

his seminal book titled The Development of

Marketing Thought (1962), in which he included an

INTRODUCTION44

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early chapter surveying some of the various

economic theories, ideologies, and philosophies on

which the emerging marketing discipline might

have been founded. He pointed out that the ‘tradi-

tionally trained marketing economist around 1900’

would have studied the writings and ideas of classi-

cal economists, including Adam Smith, David

Ricardo, John Stuart Mill; the neoclassical school,

particularly Alfred Marshall; and the marginal eco-

nomists, such as Menger and Bohm-Bawerk; con-

cerning market, value, government and business, the

consumer, and the state of the economy. Bartels was

equivocal, however, about the precise nature and

extent of various influences noting, for example on

the issue of laissez-faire, that there was much dis-

agreement among economists (and presumably,

therefore, among early students of marketing). He

added, ‘By 1900, the body of economic thought

consisted of many theories that had been developed

in England, France, Austria, Germany, the United

States, and other places. Their suitability to our own

[American] problems at that time was strongly

debated’ (1962: 12).

Jones and Monieson (1990) used Bartels’ work

as a point of departure (inasmuch as it had identi-

fied the original universities and teachers associated

with the academic study of marketing at the turn of

the century) and traced back a generation the late

nineteenth-century economists who were the teachers

of those earliest students of marketing. Their research

was among the first to make extensive use

of primary, archival data such as personal corres-

pondence, diaries, and unpublished manuscripts

and records belonging to many pioneer marketing

scholars, as well as to their teachers. Using that evi-

dence, they examined the ideas and teachings of

economists at Harvard University and the University

of Wisconsin to identify the methodological, philo-

sophical, ideological, and pedagogical assumptions

that may have influenced early marketing scholars.

They discovered that the German Historical school

of economics and its American offspring, the

Institutional school, played a profound role in deter-

mining which marketing issues were studied and

why, how those issues were studied, and why peda-

gogies such as the case method were used. At the

University of Wisconsin, under the well-known

Institutional economists Richard T. Ely and John

Commons, early marketing students such as Edward

Jones, Henry Taylor, Benjamin Hibbard, and James

Hagerty used historical, statistical, descriptive stud-

ies of marketing problems such as efficiency in the

marketing process, distributive justice, and the basic

functions of marketing – believing, as their teachers

did, that their inductive approach would eventually

result in the development of theory. They also held

a critical view of the effectiveness and efficiency of

the marketing process.

At Harvard, German-trained economists such as

Edwin Gay and Frank Taussig were the teachers of

early marketing students such as Arch Shaw and

Paul Cherington, who later became pioneers in the

marketing discipline. There, the same philosophical

ideas of the German Historical school were influen-

tial in creating an intellectual environment receptive

to the ideas of Scientific Management, which, when

applied to marketing problems, resulted in Shaw’s

work on the basic functions of marketing (Jones,

1997; Jones & Monieson, 1990). An argument is

also made that the German Historical school’s

pedagogy may have some claim to laying the foun-

dations of the case method that was developed and

popularized by the Harvard Business School. This is

relevant because, as odd as it may seem today, the

case method was later considered one of the most

important ‘concepts’ in the early development of the

marketing discipline (Converse, 1945).

Generally, however, the philosophy of German

Historical economics led to the collection of

marketing facts rather than the development of

marketing theory. That began to change during the

1950s with the work of Wroe Alderson, who is now

widely recognized as the most important marketing

theorist of the twentieth century. Many of

Alderson’s concepts and theories can be traced to

earlier ideas developed by economists from a wide

range of eras and schools of thought.

For example, the role of marketing in creating

utility or satisfaction was better understood by

Alderson (1957), who relied on a ‘value-in-use’

reasoning, than by most marketing writers of recent

generations who never read Alderson’s work. Dixon

(1990) traced Alderson’s value-in-use concept

of marketing back through the ideas of Aristotle,

Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas Barbon (the seventeenth-

century English economist), Ferdinando Galiani

(an eighteenth-century Italian economist), Etienne

de Condillac (a French philosopher of the eighteenth

century), J.B. Say (a nineteenth-century French

economist), and Karl Menger (an Austrian econo-

mist of the same period). At the same time, Dixon

traced Theodore Beckman’s (1957) value-

in-exchange concept of marketing through Classical

economists such as Adam Smith, James Mill, and

John Stuart Mill, the neoclassical economist Alfred

Marshall and his American disciple Frank Taussig,

as well as late nineteenth-century American econo-

mists including the Institutionalist, Richard T. Ely.

Both streams of economic thought provided justifi-

cation for Alderson’s rejection of the notion that dif-

ferent aspects of utility should be attributed to

production and marketing, but Alderson failed to

recognize any of those earlier economic arguments.

Dixon concluded that by the turn of the twentieth

century economists had developed a clear concept

of marketing as a productive process – something

early marketing theorists seemed to understand, but

whose arguments have since been forgotten.

Shaw’s (1994) study of the four utilities concept

followed historical lines similar to Dixon’s work,

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INTRODUCTION46

but focused on the efforts by American Institutional

economists during the late nineteenth century to

separate the concept of value, or utility, into four

component parts. In particular, Shaw noted the work

of John Bates Clark (1886) and Richard T. Ely

(1889), who used the four utilities concept to distin-

guish between different types of labor (originally:

elemental – linked with farming; form – related to

manufacturing; time; and place – associated with

marketing), thereby crediting anyone who produced

utility of some type for creating economic value.

Early students of marketing, especially those trained

under Institutional economists, seized on this con-

cept because it served to distinguish marketing from

production, and at the same time demonstrated that

marketing activities created value. Economists even-

tually dismissed the four utilities concept, but

marketing scholars made it a cornerstone of their

discipline.

Where Shaw’s work departs significantly from

Dixon’s is in tracing the evolution of the utility con-

cept in marketing from the earliest principles of mar-

keting texts to marketing management texts of

today, and in describing efforts by marketing schol-

ars throughout the twentieth century to relate the

four utilities concept, first to the marketing functions,

next to the nature and scope of marketing, and later

to the four Ps of marketing management. Shaw con-

cluded, as the neoclassical economists had a century

earlier, that the four utilities concept offers little that

isn’t better explained by the value-added concept. As

Alderson had done a half century earlier, Shaw

observed that what is needed is a marketing inter-

pretation of the whole process of creating utility.

Alderson was also concerned with the role of

marketing in system-environment interactions, but

apparently overlooked earlier writings by econo-

mists on that same issue (Dixon, 1999). Dixon

examined work done during the late nineteenth

century by Alfred Marshall and by Austrian eco-

nomists such as Carl Menger, Eugene von Bohm-

Bawerk, and Fredrich von Wieser, describing late

nineteenth- century theories of the consumer, produc-

tion and exchange, marketing effort (especially pric-

ing), system structure (firm size), and interactions

between the system and its environment. Dixon then

compared them with Alderson’s mid-twentieth-

century treatment of the same concepts in his attempts

to develop a general theory of marketing. Many simi-

larities were identified between Alderson’s theories

and those of Marshall and the Austrians, but the main

difference was in their respective recognition

of the interactions between marketing and its

environments. Here, Alderson’s focus was decidedly

more micro-analytic because he was concerned with

developing a theory of the firm usable by marketing

executives. Because of that difference, Dixon

suggested that the contributions of those late

nineteenth-century economists have not been re-

cognized, leading him also to wonder whether the

focus of marketing theory on the behavior of the

firm was a cause or result of the failure to appreciate

this intellectual heritage.

System interrelationships were also at the root of

an issue that dogged marketing scholars through

much of the twentieth century, even though it had

been largely solved by economists a century earlier –

the cost of distribution. A debate about whether or

not distribution cost too much culminated in well-

known studies designed to estimate those costs, first

by Stewart and Dewhurst (1939), and later by Cox

et al. (1965). According to Dixon (1991), both stud-

ies were flawed because they did not fully appreci-

ate concepts and approaches to measurement of the

structure of economic systems developed by econo-

mists between the eighteenth and late nineteenth

centuries. As a result, those early estimates of the

cost of distribution by marketing scholars were over-

estimated and then repeated for half a century. It is

only in the last 20 years that a better application of

input-output models to understanding marketing

system structure and its relationship with the environ-

ment has been made.

Another of Shaw’s studies (1990) complemented

Dixon’s work by distinguishing between marketing

costs and marketing productivity. Shaw reviewed

five cost studies for a single year, and seven produc-

tivity studies carried out between 1869 and 1968. In

response to the often-asked question, ‘Does distrib-

ution cost too much?’ he concluded the question of

costs cannot be answered without considering the

benefits provided. On the other hand, input costs and

output benefits are considered in the productivity

ratio and Shaw discovered a rising secular trend,

concluding that over the past century marketing has

become more productive.

It is ironic that while the marketing discipline was

founded by scholars trained in economics, so much

of that economic thinking, some of it very relevant

today, has either been misunderstood or forgotten.

Fortunately, the relationship between the history of

economic thought and history of marketing thought

remains a topic of considerable interest to marketing

historians, and so may ultimately be rediscovered.

EMERGENCE OF THE MARKETING

DISCIPLINE: 1900–1957

Most of the research on the history of marketing

thought has dealt with the era when marketing was

first taught in universities and a clearly recognizable

body of literature began forming. No historian has

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A HISTORY OF MARKETING THOUGHT 47

been more dedicated to the genesis of marketing in

the academy than Robert Bartels.

Robert Bartels and The Development of

Marketing Thought

No other scholar has become so identified with the

history of marketing thought as has Robert Bartels.

He is credited with ‘almost single-handedly [keep-

ing] interest in the history of marketing thought alive

through his book on the subject and his

doctoral seminars’ (Hollander, Nevett & Fullerton,

1990: 267). Bartels’ books on the History of

Marketing Thought (1962, 1976, 1988) contain

discussions of the meaning of marketing, early

theories of marketing, and the beginnings of market-

ing thought, as well as a number of special areas of

marketing thought, such as advertising, sales man-

agement, retailing, and marketing research, among

others. Although the period prior to 1960 dominates

Bartels’ History, marketing management and several

other areas of thought since the 1960s, such as

marketing systems, channels, and international

marketing are included in later editions of the book.

In all this, Bartels regards the general literature as

most important, because it represents ‘A distillation

and integration of thought … in the specialized

areas … [And in it] are found the best measures of

marketing thought: its scientific character, its

historical evolution, its social orientation, its philo-

sophic, economic, and cultural characteristics’

(1988: 141). To describe the marketing thought

literature Bartels divided the period from 1900 to the

1970s into eleven-year decades:

1900–1910 – The Period of Discovery

1910–1920 – The Period of Conceptualization

1920–1930 – The Period of Integration

1930–1940 – The Period of Development

1940–1950 – The Period of Reappraisal

1950–1960 – The Period of Reconceptualization

1960–1970 – The Period of Differentiation

from 1970 – The Period of Socialization

It is not clear why Bartels overlaped the beginning

and ending year of each decade, but it presents an

immediate source of confusion. He regarded 1910 as

the year the term ‘marketing’ was first used to iden-

tify the discipline. Consequently, given the overlap

in decades, Bartels was forced to include the

origin of the term marketing both at the end of the

Period of Discovery as well as the beginning of

the Period of Conceptualization – one of several

sources of confusion that would not otherwise arise

if his eleven-year decades followed the standard

dating convention of ten years per decade!

Before tracing the evolution of marketing thought

from 1900, there is the question of those who influ-

enced the early academics who first started thinking

about marketing. This is discussed in a chapter

on ‘The Beginnings of Marketing Thought’ based

on Bartels’ (1951) article ‘Influences on the

Development of Marketing Thought, 1900–1923.’

Tracing the lineage of marketing influence provides

a particularly useful reference source for under-

standing the history of marketing thought. In a

genealogical chart, Bartels (1988: 28) primarily

credited the Institutional economists at Wisconsin,

such as Richard T. Ely and John Commons, and

economists at Harvard, such as Frank Taussig and

Edwin Gay, for training several early marketing

pioneers.

In the Period of Discovery, 1900–1910, Bartels

noted the first American college marketing courses

were taught in 1902 and identified the early teachers

and universities, including Edward Jones at

Michigan, Simon Litman at California-Berkeley,

and George M. Fisk at Illinois. He regarded the

Report of the Industrial Commission on the

Distribution of Farm Products (1901), dealing with

the costs of distributing agricultural goods, as the

first book on general marketing. Most early scholars

focused on understanding this distribution system

because of concerns with the large price spread in

agricultural products between producers and

consumers, and popular criticisms of high costs,

waste and inefficiencies in marketing.

Bartels believed he found the origins of market-

ing thought, placing it in America ‘between

1906–1911’ (1988: 3), with his best approximation

‘about 1910’ (1988: 143). His argument was based

on when the term ‘marketing’ was first used as a

noun and where academic thought about marketing

began. There is disagreement on both counts – time

and place. In regard to time, Bartels apparently erred

on the year marketing entered the language as a

noun, signifying marketing thought, rather than its

use as a verb, indicating marketing practice. One

writer traced the ‘academic use of the term market-

ing’ back to 1897 (Bussiere, 2000: 142), and even

before marketing emerged as an academic disci-

pline, another author discovered marketing as a

noun in 1856, implying it might be even earlier

(Lazer, 1979: 654); still another writer tracked the

term back to 1561 (Shaw, 1995). Bartels also

believed that marketing thought originated in uni-

versity courses in the US. However, there is contrary

evidence that marketing courses were offered in

Germany before those offered at American institu-

tions (Fullerton, 1988; Jones and Monieson, 1990).

Bartels named the first epoch in the history of

marketing thought the Period of Conceptualization,

1910–1920, because the ‘commodity, institutional,

Swen3033-02.qxd 6/19/02 9:31 PM Page 47

and functional approaches … were conceived’

(1988: 143). Now known as the traditional

approaches to (or schools of) marketing thought,

they dominated academic thinking about marketing

until the mid 1950s. The functional approach was

concerned with the activities of the marketing

process (e.g., buying and selling, transporting and

storing, advertising, research, credit, standardizing

and grading). The institutional approach focused on

the types of organizations known as marketing insti-

tutions (e.g., merchant wholesalers, agents, brokers,

rack jobbers, catalog, general, specialty and depart-

ment store retailers) that performed marketing activi-

ties on various products. And the commodity

approach centered on the products (e.g., farming,

forestry, fisheries, mining, manufacturing, and occa-

sionally services) that were processed by marketing

institutions.

Bartels described the Period of Integration,

1920–1930, as the ‘Golden Decade,’ because

Principles texts were integrating knowledge in mar-

keting and many sub-disciplines such as advertising,

credit, sales management and salesmanship. Bartels

credited Ivey (1921) with the first use of the title

Principles of Marketing, as well as one of market-

ing’s best known principles: ‘the middleman himself

can be eliminated, but his functions cannot’ (Bartels,

1988: 148). Other early marketing textbook writers

during this period include Cherington (1920),

Converse (1921), Clark (1922), Brown (1925), and

Maynard, Weidler and Beckman (1927).

The years 1930–1940 are called the Period of

Development. The most notable comment about the

decade is that ‘The “principles” texts were kept up

to date.’ Revisions of Converse and Hugey’s

Elements of Marketing (1930, 1935, 1940), Clark’s

Principles of Marketing (1932), and Maynard and

Beckman’s Principles of Marketing (1932, 1939)

dominated sales of entry-level college textbooks.

Consequently, only one new principles text by

Phillips (1938) was able to break into the market.

Some newly published books focused on the com-

modity approach for non-agricultural products (and

occasionally services) such as Breyer’s Commodity

Marketing (1931) and Comish’s Marketing

Manufactured Goods (1935). However, the most

important new book of the decade was largely

overlooked – then and now. Described as ‘unortho-

dox,’ Breyer’s The Marketing Institution (1934)

provided the most systematic and theoretical

approach in marketing thought to that date. Bartels

regarded Breyer’s work as rising ‘above the mecha-

nistic concept of marketing … portrayed as separate

functions … in conventional works … to present a

theory of a compound operation; [however,] his effort

failed to make much impression on the market for

ideas at the time’ (1988: 155, italics in original).

One of the most significant developments affect-

ing marketing thought during this decade, and

indeed the entire century, is noticeably absent in

Bartels’ treatment of the history of marketing

thought. Only mentioned in a single sentence, in one

section of chapter dealing with Associations, the

American Marketing Journal was first published in

1934, became the National Marketing Review in

1935, and then the Journal of Marketing in 1936

(Bartels, 1988: 29). Of all the publications in

marketing, the ‘JM’ undoubtedly represents one of

the most dominant influences on the development of

marketing thought.

The Period of Reappraisal, 1940–1950, saw the

incipient development of two new conceptual

approaches to marketing – management and systems.

The seeds of marketing management were planted

in the 1940 text Marketing by Alexander, Surface,

Elder and Alderson. This book focused on planning

and controlling marketing activities within a busi-

ness firm. Following Breyer’s 1934 work, another

systemic treatment of marketing was that of Duddy

and Revzan (1947), who viewed ‘the marketing

structure as an organic whole made up of interre-

lated parts, subject to growth and change’ (Bartels,

1988: 156). For unexplained reasons, the 1952 work

of Vaile, Grether and Cox is also included in this

decade, rather than the next. Their book, Marketing

in the American Economy, is yet another early

systematic approach to marketing.

The developing conceptual approaches of the

prior decade reached maturity, according to Bartels,

in the 1950–1960 Period of Reconception. The dis-

tinction between this and the previous decade ‘was

thin,’ according to Bartels, but rested on the ‘degree

of concern with a theoretical statement of marketing

knowledge’ and ‘the replacement of the “functional-

institutional-commodity”’ schools of marketing

thought. One of the earliest theoretical works, Cox

and Alderson’s Theory in Marketing (1950), offered

a collection of essays that included a diverse array of

marketing topics with a theoretical bent. In addition

to the usual economic theorizing, essays included

theories related to consumer psychology, demo-

graphics and organizational behavior, among others.

The early developments in marketing management

and systems thinking of the previous decades, were

both more fully developed in Wroe Alderson’s semi-

nal work Marketing Behavior and Executive Action

(1957). Bartels regarded this work as ‘unquestion-

ably the most fully developed theoretical exposition

of marketing up to that time’ (1988: 238). This book

represents a landmark in distinguishing ‘modern

marketing thought’ from the ‘traditional marketing

thought’ that had gone before. Alderson combined

management and systems into a single unified

approach, focusing on firms (and households) as

‘organized behavior systems’ processing inputs into

outputs. Most subsequent writers, however, focused

on either the ‘micro’ firm perspective of marketing

management, or the more ‘macro’ view of marketing

systems (which often included firms as a sub-system)

as alternative perspectives to marketing thought.

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With the growth of these two new conceptual

schools, the traditional functions-institutions-

commodities approaches to marketing thought

followed the life cycle of ideas into decline. Most

writers of the time (e.g., Howard, 1957; Kelley and

Lazer, 1958; McCarthy, 1960) pursued the growing

interest in marketing management, which since the

1970s developed into the dominant paradigm of

marketing thought, replacing ‘principles’ as the

entry-level course in the marketing curriculum.

Marketing systems, and several other approaches to

marketing thought awaited developments in the next

and subsequent decades.

During the Period of Differentiation, 1960–1970,

a few principles texts remained but they were

laggards and the traditional approaches to marketing

thought were almost entirely replaced by an increas-

ing array of specialty areas of marketing thought,

including marketing management, marketing sys-

tems, quantitative analysis in marketing, interna-

tional marketing, and consumer behavior. Although

given impetus in earlier decades, marketing systems

analysis was greatly enhanced and significantly

expanded by Alderson’s (1965) Dynamic Marketing

Behavior, another seminal work in marketing

thought during the last half century. Despite its popu-

larity across a wide variety of disciplines among the

physical, biological and social sciences, the

systems approach attracted only a few adherents in

marketing, fewer books, and a brief flurry of journal

articles. These were mostly written by Alderson’s

students, such as Fisk’s (1967) Marketing Systems,

Fisk and Dixon’s (1967) Theories for Marketing

Systems Analysis, Dixon’s (1968) ‘Social Systems,’

and Narver and Savitt’s (1971) The Marketing

Economy. The area of marketing systems has been

relatively quiescent during the past few decades.

This is surprising, because the systems approach

offers the only possibility of providing a unity to all

the other sub-areas of marketing thought in the

general theory that was an underlying concern of

Bartels’ work (e.g., 1988: 241, 287).

Marketing models and quantitative methods also

became popular during the 1960s (e.g., Bass et al.,

1968; Buzzell, 1964; Day, 1964; Frank & Green,

1967; King, 1967; Kotler, 1971 Langhoff, 1965).

Also popularizing this specialty, the Journal of

Marketing Research increasingly moved from quali-

tative articles to those more quantitatively oriented.

There was also an array of International Marketing

books (e.g., Fayerweather, 1965; Hess & Cateora,

1966; Kramer, 1964; Leighton, 1966) and more

recently several journals published in the interna-

tional marketing arena. Unexpectedly, Bartels

ignored consumer behavior in his decade-by-decade

coverage – the specialty attracting the greatest

number of adherents after marketing management.

He did include it, however, in his chapter on

‘Influences on the Development of Marketing

Thought, 1950–1987.’ For the most part the area

started its rapid growth with the development of

extended and complex consumer/buyer behavior

models. The two most notable books were Engel,

Kollat and Blackwell’s (1968) Consumer Behavior

and Howard and Sheth’s (1969) Theory of Buyer

Behavior. Spurring its rapid growth, several dedi-

cated journals were published in the 1970s, includ-

ing the Journal for Consumer Research.

The Period of Socialization, beginning in 1970,

only discussed work until the mid-1970s, because

the 1988 History of Marketing Thought is largely a

reprint of the previous 1976 edition, with one new

chapter bringing the book up to date. Bartels’ dis-

cussion of this half decade is more tentative than

other periods, as he noted ‘the 1970s are distin-

guished by a larger social element in marketing

thought.’ He specifically cited in that connection

Kotler’s (1975) work on Marketing for Non-Profit

Organizations, which translated marketing termi-

nology and technology to social causes. Social

marketing is a result of more fundamental concepts

that Bartels glossed over. They pose a critical

problem for marketing thought, however, because

they define marketing’s nature and scope. The latter

is based on Kotler and Levy’s (1969) ‘broadening

concept’ of marketing, and the former on Kotler’s

(1971) ‘generic concept’ of marketing. Both are

very briefly described in Bartels’ History but neither

is critically examined. This is surprising, because in

other publications (1974, 1983, 1986) Bartels

regards these views as limiting and diverting

marketing thought.

‘Broadening’ is the notion that all organizations,

including government agencies, political parties,

and charities deal with stakeholders, of one type or

another, and could therefore benefit from using

marketing concepts and techniques, such as target

marketing, focus groups, survey research, and per-

suasive communication ranging from advertising to

personal selling. The ‘generic’ concept expresses

the idea that market transactions can be generalized

to any social or economic form of exchange. The

problem this poses for marketing thought is whether

marketing is determined by subject matter or by

techniques (Bartels, 1974: 74–5).

It is a weakness of his history books that Bartels

seldom integrated new material into old chapters,

but simply added newer chapters onto his older

editions. Consequently, the later books have more of

a layered, than integrated, quality about them. For

example, in addition to the decade-by-decade

approach in the 1962 book, Bartels added a chapter

on the ‘Maturing of Marketing Thought’ in the 1976

book, which includes subheadings of ‘The

Development of Thought – 1900 to 1960,’ and ‘The

Development of Thought Since 1960.’ These two

periods in the revised book clearly overlap his

decade-by-decade coverage in the original 1962

book. Similarly, in the 1988 book, one new chapter

is added: ‘Influences on the Development of

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Marketing Thought 1950–1987.’ However, this

chapter starts with a discussion of the early influ-

ences of turn-of-the-century marketing pioneers, and

overlaps both the 1962 decade-by-decade history and

the 1976 ‘Maturing of Marketing Thought’ chapter.

As a reference source for the historian of market-

ing thought, Bartels’ appendices are invaluable.

A notable achievement of the books is Bartels’ bio-

graphical sketches of 18 leaders of marketing

thought from the first half of the twentieth century,

and 20 more thought leaders since 1950. Another

notable historical accomplishment is Bartels’

chronological listing of marketing books, organized

by topic area, from the turn of the century up to the

1970s. Taken as a whole, despite the criticisms, this

work is a monumental contribution to the literature

of marketing. No other work in the discipline offers

such a sweeping, detailed perspective of marketing

thinking in twentieth-century America as Bartels’.

Emergence of a Marketing Literature

Bartels wasn’t the only marketing historian who

considered the general literature a starting point for

studying the academic history of marketing thought;

he wasn’t even the first. With all the usual caveats

that go with that claim, this review suggests that the

first publication by a marketing academician to look

at the history of marketing thought was an article

titled ‘The First Decade of Marketing Literature’ by

Paul D. Converse, published in 1933 in the NATMA

Bulletin (National Association of Teachers of

Marketing and Advertising). Converse identified

several books published between 1915 and 1924 as

the first to be written about marketing. The earliest

was Arch Shaw’s (1915) Some Problems in Market

Distribution, which, Converse also pointed out, in-

itiated the functional approach to marketing.

Converse considered Butler’s (1917) Marketing

Methods and Policies to be the first ‘teachable’

book. Interestingly, the editor of the NATMA

Bulletin was critical of Converse for omitting

several books believed worthy of inclusion, some of

which were published prior to 1915.

There is also clear historical evidence of an even

earlier periodic literature dealing with marketing,

and not surprisingly it was found in economics.

Bussiere (2000) studied the early publications of the

American Economic Association and identified arti-

cles dealing with marketing topics as early as 1894.

The first use of the term ‘marketing’ there, in a man-

ner consistent with modern use, was by Hammond

in 1897. Prior to the formation of the NATMA, most

marketing professors belonged to the American

Economic Association and its periodic publications,

especially the American Economic Review (AER),

were probably the most popular publishing outlets

for marketing academics. According to Bussiere, the

number of marketing articles published in the AER

increased until 1925, when marketing academics

began to organize their own associations, culminat-

ing in the American Marketing Association.

The history of the American Marketing

Association (AMA) actually goes beyond the

NATMA and was chronicled by Agnew in 1941. In

1915 the National Association of Teachers of

Advertising was formed under the leadership of

Walter Dill Scott. There were 13 original members,

including Agnew. In 1926 its name was changed to

the National Association of Teachers of Marketing

and Advertising in order to recognize the broadening

membership that included marketing professionals

and teachers. NATMA published the NATMA-

Graphs, which later became the NATMA Bulletin. In

1933 the name of the association was changed again,

this time to the National Association of Teachers of

Marketing, as it became increasingly recognized that

advertising was part of the broader field of market-

ing. NATM first published the American Marketing

Journal in 1934, which became the National

Marketing Review in 1935, and began publication of

the Journal of Marketing in 1936. Finally, in 1937

the NATM and the American Marketing Society

merged, to form the American Marketing Associ-

ation (AMA).

In 1947 the first of several retrospectives (others

appeared in 1952, 1976 and 1996) was written about

the Journal of Marketing’s development and contri-

bution to the marketing literature. Applebaum (1947)

described the various sections of the Journal and pro-

vided copious statistics about the publishing activi-

ties over its first 10 years including, for example,

the number of articles by subject (by far the most

popular were marketing research and government

regulation of marketing) and by type of author/

occupation (practitioners, university teachers, and

government employees). Surprisingly, business

practitioners wrote approximately half of the 435

regular articles published between 1936 and 1947.

Because the history of the Journal was so intimately

tied to that of the AMA, Applebaum also included

several facts about the history of that association.

For example, the total membership of 584 at incep-

tion in 1937 had quadrupled to 2300 members by

1947. Five years later, Applebaum (1952) published

a post-war update to his statistical summary of the

Journal’s activities. Among the changes reported,

government regulation as a subject in the journal had

retreated significantly in importance. Marketing

research was still the most common subject, fol-

lowed by wholesaling, then teaching of marketing.

Practitioners still dominated as authors.

It is disappointing that the subject categories used

in those first two retrospectives did not include

‘marketing history,’ because we know that history

was a relatively common theme during that period.

Many of the articles dealing with the teaching of

marketing (the third most common category in

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1952) were retrospectives on early experiences of

marketing teachers.

The notion that a marketing ‘literature’ first

appeared after the turn of the twentieth century was

challenged by Lazer (1979), who pointed out that

early writers did not use the term ‘marketing,’ but

rather, terms like ‘commerce’ and ‘distribution,’

which were synonymous with ‘marketing.’ If

marketing historians redirected their research based

on that broader interpretation of terminology, they

would find new insights into the development of

marketing thought. Viewed from this perspective,

Lazer traced the development of marketing thought

to a pre-1800 stage that focused on the role of

middlemen, ideas of mercantilism, the acceptance of

capitalist thought, and the development of national

markets. That was followed by a period from 1800

to 1900 when marketing was seen as part of eco-

nomics and the marketing literature was character-

ized by books such as The Retailer’s Manual,

published in 1869 (Hoagland and Lazer, 1960).

Similarly, an advertising literature developed

earlier than, and separately from, the general market-

ing literature and some of that development was

chronicled by Coolsen (1947). Using The American

Catalogue, 1876–1905, and The United States

Catalogue, 1912, as publication records, Coolsen

identified 10 books on the technique of advertising

which pre-dated 1895, four more published between

1895 and 1900, and another 75 volumes published

between 1900 and 1910. Coolsen grouped the con-

tributors to this literature into three categories:

advertising practitioners (especially copywriters and

agents), academic psychologists, and correspon-

dence textbook writers. The earliest book, according

to Coolsen, was Edwin T. Freedley’s (1852)

Practical Treatise on Business.

Goodman (1996) also noted that there was a perio-

dic literature before the Journal of Marketing and its

contributors were often not marketing academics.

Goodman reviewed the Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science, which

began publication in 1890, as an outlet for market-

ing ideas and discovered articles by economists,

practitioners, and government officials as far back

as 1903. Between 1903 and 1940 various issues of

the Annals dealt with marketing-related topics such

as intermediary sorting, retailing practices, price

controls and inflation, pricing legislation and con-

trols, channels of distribution, government regula-

tion of marketing, and a wide variety of agricultural

marketing and food marketing topics. The latter was

by far the most common general marketing subject

covered in the Annals during the time period

reviewed by Goodman. Its contributors ‘viewed mar-

keting phenomena largely as seen by outside, often

critical, observers whose goal was to improve the

system’ (Goodman, 1996: 142). A 1940 special issue,

titled ‘Marketing in Our American Economy,’ deal-

ing with marketing costs and efficiency, for the first

time included a significant number of marketing

scholars as contributors, such as Wroe Alderson,

Theodore N. Beckman, Paul D. Converse, and

N. H. Engle. The timing was noteworthy because in

1939 Stewart and Dewhurst had published their

critical book Does Distribution Cost Too Much?

There is little doubt that a literature focusing on

marketing education existed outside the US.

However, there is almost no published discussion of

this in the American marketing literature. The few

exceptions mentioned here deal with translations of

American work. Fullerton (1994) translated and ana-

lyzed a book published by H.F.J. Kropff (1939) in

Germany. The misleading title, The Totality of

Promotion, obscured the fact that it included a chapter

reviewing and evaluating marketing practices and

education in the US. The book dealt with market

and advertising research, applied psychology,

and the state of marketing education. Similarly,

Usui (2000) cited examples of Japanese publications

as early as 1929 that looked at American marketing

practices. The American pioneer scholar who most

captured the attention of the Japanese was Arch

Shaw, whose work has been the subject of no fewer

than 27 historical studies.

Collegiate Education in Marketing

A development paralleling the marketing literature

was higher education; indeed, those two are, per-

haps, the most tangible residue of the origins of a

marketing discipline. Once marketing in the acad-

emy was recognizable, its professors began to

reflect on the first courses, programs, and people

involved. A stream of biographical and autobio-

graphical research during the 1950s and 1960s con-

tributed in a tangential way to the history of

university teaching, but several earlier publications

focused specifically on identifying the origins of

higher education in marketing.

The very first volume of the Journal of Marketing

featured an essay by one of the discipline’s first pro-

fessors, James Hagerty, who began a tradition of

pioneer teachers reflecting on their experiences.

Hagerty (1936) identified several of the earliest

American universities to offer marketing courses,

including the University of Illinois (1902), New

York University (1902), the Ohio State University

(1905), the University of Pittsburgh (1909) and the

Harvard Business School (1908), although he

focused on early curriculum development at the

Ohio State University, where he was a faculty

member and later dean. Hagerty also pointed out the

difficulty that had characterized efforts to identify

early books about marketing; that marketing was

originally thought about under names other than

‘marketing.’ For example, until 1916 the marketing

course at OSU went by several different names

including ‘Mercantile Institutions.’ Since there was

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little or no literature on the subject, teachers of that

era relied on local businessmen and students’ inter-

views of them. Hagerty added, however, that The

Distribution of Farm Products, volume six, pub-

lished by the US Industrial Commission in 1901,

was one of the earliest studies used as a marketing

textbook.

L.D.H. Weld, who began his teaching career at

the University of Minnesota in 1912, was another

pioneer teacher to publish his reminiscences in the

Journal of Marketing. Weld (1941) credited the

University of Michigan as the first to offer a course

in marketing in 1902, followed by the Wharton

School at the University of Pennsylvania (1904) and

Ohio State (1905). According to Weld, the course at

Wharton was the first to use the word ‘marketing’ in

its title, but he questions whether or not the subject

matter of some of those early courses bore much

resemblance to marketing at that time.

In that same issue of the Journal of Marketing,

Harold Maynard (1941a) wrote about marketing

courses prior to 1910, with the specific objective of

determining once and for all which university course

was the ‘first’ to teach marketing. All the institutions

cited above were also mentioned in Maynard’s arti-

cle. He dealt with the issue of course title by arguing

that actual subject matter, rather than title, should

establish when marketing was first taught in univer-

sities. Based on that position and his extensive

research, Maynard determined that the first univer-

sity marketing course was offered in 1902 at the

University of Michigan and taught by Professor

Edward David Jones. Maynard included as evidence

the university calendar course description, and fol-

lowed up by describing other marketing courses

offered by Jones at Michigan in subsequent years.

Interestingly, Maynard published an update later

that year (1941b) in response to comments he

received from other pioneer teachers. They led

Maynard to acknowledge courses offered by George

M. Fisk at the University of Illinois in 1902, one

semester following Jones’ course at Michigan, as

well as previously ignored contributions (albeit in

1910) by Ralph Starr Butler at the University of

Wisconsin. However, the status of being first

remained with Jones and Michigan.

The University of Illinois’ distinction, mentioned

above, motivated one of its pioneering teachers,

Simon Litman, to write about his early teaching

experiences (1950). Litman actually began his

career at the University of California and believed

that west coast institutions had been overlooked in

the efforts to identify original course offerings. He

had taught a marketing course in 1902 at the

University of California, although because it was

offered in the second semester that year, could only

claim a second place tie with the University of

Illinois’ offering that same year. Litman described in

detail the content of his first marketing courses,

including the lack of an established literature, his

attempts to use local businessmen in class, and the

topics about which students wrote in their papers.

Another study of origins warranting mention is

Schultze’s (1982), which examined the early develop-

ment of university education in advertising.

Schultze documented the role played by advertising

clubs and the ad industry, a perspective largely

ignored in retrospectives on higher education in the

general field of marketing.

Most of the writings summarized above were

echoed in an article by Bartels (1951) that antici-

pated his seminal book on the development of

marketing thought in 1962. By that time, the debate

about the origins of collegiate education in market-

ing appeared settled, at least as far as such develop-

ment in the US was concerned. The history in other

countries has largely been ignored. A study by Jones

(1992) looked at Canadian university courses in

marketing and credits Queen’s University, the

University of Western Ontario, and the University of

Toronto as the pioneer institutions in that country

with the earliest courses offered in 1919 at Queen’s.

In a follow-up study, Cunningham and Jones

(1997) examined the early development of collegiate

education in international marketing at Queen’s

University in Canada and compared it with similar

developments at the University of Illinois and the

Harvard Business School. In addition to dating

courses and writings on international marketing much

earlier than previously believed, Cunningham and

Jones discussed some of the differences between

Canadian and American marketing education at that

time – those differences being driven by Canada’s

relatively heavier reliance on international trade.

As previously mentioned, Bartels’ research relied

quite heavily on interviews with pioneer scholars

still living at the time of his dissertation research and

many of those interviews formed the basis of short

biographical sketches included as an appendix to the

various volumes of his book (1962, 1976, 1988).

Numerous other biographical sketches and longer,

biographical articles have since contributed to our

understanding of the thinkers of marketing ideas

over the last century. Converse (1959) wrote a col-

lection of 25 short biographical sketches of early

marketing scholars including the four nineteenth-

century economists studied by Coolsen, discussed

on p. 00 above. Each of the 25 sketches is only a

page or two in length, but highlights the major con-

tributions of its subject. Between 1956 and 1962 the

Journal of Marketing featured 23 biographical

sketches of ‘Pioneers in Marketing’ as the series was

known. Several of those were later revised with

additional information and two others added in a

compilation by Wright and Dimsdale (1974). More

recently, a series of article-length biographies

has been published by Jones (1993a, 1993b, 1994,

1995, 1999) about pioneer marketing scholars,

including H.C. Taylor, E.D. Jones, T.N. Beckman,

G.B. Hotchkiss, and W.R. Davidson, some of whom

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were included in the shorter JM pieces. Hollander,

whose career began in the pioneer era and continues

to flourish, has published an autobiography (1995)

that stands on its own as a contribution to the history

of marketing thought. And finally, Shaw and

Tamilia (2001) have written a biography/historiog-

raphy on ‘Robert Bartels and the History of

Marketing Thought.’ Taken together, this body of

biographical research has contributed many insights

into the influences, motivations, approaches,

and ideas of the scholars who built the marketing

discipline.

From the teachers, courses, and schools, we move

to the larger picture of collegiate education.

Following World War II, there was an explosion of

attendance at universities in western countries that

led to phenomenal growth in the number of institu-

tions offering business programs, and the number

and variety of marketing courses. Statistics on such

growth in the US between 1930 and 1950 were

included in Hardy’s (1954) study of collegiate

marketing education. This period was later described

by Lazer and Shaw (1988) as one of ‘expansion and

diversification’ when the academic quality of

marketing education was open to question, course

specialization was rampant, and many practitioners

taught in universities on a part-time basis due to a

lack of sufficient faculty members. That period was

followed by one of ‘reassessment and reorganiza-

tion’ with growth in graduate programs, increased

emphasis on quantitative methods, social and behav-

ioral sciences, and the addition of doctorally quali-

fied faculty members (Lazer and Shaw, 1988). The

period from 1960 to the late 1980s was described as

one of ‘differentiation and legitimization,’ marked

by the recommendations of the Ford and Carnegie

Foundation reports of 1959. Of particular interest is

the commentary by Lazer and Shaw on the negative

reactions in universities to the founding of business

schools at the turn of the century. This explains in

part the characterization of the latter period as one of

legitimization.

The period of expansion and diversification

referred to above included some positive develop-

ments in the marketing discipline. As it grew, the

ideas and concepts appearing in its articles, books,

and university course offerings had matured into

schools of thought.

Traditional Schools of

Marketing Thought

By the 1920s, the study of marketing was becoming

organized into three approaches. The functional

approach focused on marketing activities – the basic

work done in marketing. The commodity approach

focused on goods (originally agricultural goods,

hence the name ‘commodity’) classified according

to common product characteristics. The institutional

approach was concerned primarily with the various

organizations that did the work of marketing. While

they came to be known individually as schools of

thought, it would have been rare as well as difficult

for any comprehensive discussion of marketing at

that time, say, in a principles text, to rely on just one

of those basic approaches because of their inter-

relationships. Organizations (institutions) per-

formed activities (functions) with goods

(commodities). Hollander (1980) pointed out this

problem in his attempt to describe early examples of

the institutional approach. Nevertheless, historians

have studied the origins and development of these

three schools individually and collectively.

As part of a broader study of 12 schools of

marketing thought, Sheth et al. (1988) examined the

three traditional schools in some detail. While their

attempts to categorize and meta-theoretically evaluate

the schools detracted somewhat from the historical

description, the latter provided sufficient material to

understand the origin, essence, and major contribu-

tors to each school. In fact, their criteria for status as

a school included association with a ‘pioneer thinker’

and with a ‘significant number of scholars who have

contributed toward the thought process’ (Sheth et al.,

1988: 19). Accordingly, the functional school was

said to have originated with Arch Shaw’s (1912) arti-

cle titled ‘Some Problems in Market Distribution’

(lengthened and published as a book under the same

title in 1915). This claim was reinforced by Converse,

among others, whose 1945 survey of early twentieth-

century marketing scholars also pointed to the func-

tional approach as the ‘most valuable concept’ in

marketing at that time. Other notable contributors

included Weld, Vanderblue, Ryan, and numerous

other scholars who alternately elaborated or con-

densed the list of basic marketing functions over the

years, until the work of McGarry (1950) which

served to bridge our thinking from the functional

school to the four Ps of marketing management.

Jones (1997) recently examined Shaw’s (1912)

use of machine metaphors in the latter’s seminal

work on marketing functions, and offered some

insights into Shaw’s thinking about those functions.

Shaw believed that marketing involved the applica-

tion of motion to material. He felt that scientific

study of marketing should focus on identifying the

motions operating in the marketing system. Shaw

identified five such motions, but insisted that the

analysis was incomplete. Once it was completed, he

suggested, the ultimate goal of the marketing system

should be to identify and eliminate all nonessential

motions in order to make the marketing machine

operate more efficiently. Shaw’s motions became

known as the basic functions of marketing.

Usui’s (2000) detailed history of Japanese scholar-

ship in marketing focuses on the profound and

lasting influence that Arch Shaw has had in that

country, especially through his pioneering work on

marketing functions. Both Jones (1997) and Usui

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also pointed to the influence of Scientific Management

on Shaw’s work in this area.

Hunt and Goolsby (1988) used a life-cycle

metaphor to study the history of the functional

approach, suggesting that it survived a contest with

the commodity and institutional schools, growing

and outnumbering the latter in applications bet-

ween 1920 and 1940, then reaching maturity with

McGarry’s analysis in 1950. Its decline began with

McCarthy’s four Ps and the managerial approach

that followed the Gordon and Howell report in 1959.

Their conclusion was that the functional approach is

dead, swept away in the dustbin of history.

Sheth et al. (1988) dated the origin of the

commodity school to a classification by C.C. Parlin in

1912, although most historians would probably

cite Copeland’s (1923) article in the Harvard

Business Review, which proposed the now familiar

convenience-shopping-specialty goods classifi-

cation. Copeland himself credited Parlin for the

convenience and shopping goods categories. Just as

the functional school had generated numerous lists of

different functions, the commodity school generated

a number of variations of the original three classes

and a plethora of methods for assigning goods to the

various classes. Long after the functional school

faded away, discussions of good classifications con-

tinued to the present day. Nevertheless, Zinn and

Johnson (1990) wondered whether the commodity

approach was ‘obsolete,’ citing numerous papers

during the 1970s that had proclaimed it dead. They

carried out a content analysis of the Journal of

Marketing (1936–1989) and AMA Proceedings

(1957–1989), and determined that the commodity

approach had exhibited a cyclical adoption rate, that

with each cycle different commodities were studied,

and that more recent articles have attempted to

develop the theoretical side of commodity classifi-

cation systems.

According to Sheth et al., the institutional school

focused on organizations in marketing channels and

how they performed functions to achieve channel

efficiency. It originated with L.D.H. Weld’s book

The Marketing of Farm Products (1916), followed

by important contributions from Butler (1923),

Breyer (1934), Converse and Huegy (1940), and

Duddy and Revzan (1947). As with most marketing

thought during the first half of the twentieth century,

institutionalists relied on ideas from economics to

develop their thinking. During the 1970s an influx of

behavioral science ideas helped change institutional-

ism into what Sheth et al. (1988) called the organi-

zational dynamics school of thought, which is

examined later in this section.

Hollander’s 1980 study of early institutional

work was cited previously in connection with the

problems historians have had in differentiating

between functional, commodity, and institutional

approaches. Hollander also pointed out that the

traditional approaches were not mutually exclusive.

The differences between them were not as obvious

or substantial as, say, the differences between eco-

nomic schools of thought. It is relatively easy to

find applications of different traditional approaches

in a single scholar’s work and Hollander cited

Weld, credited by Sheth et al. (1988) with originat-

ing the institutional approach, in that connection. It

is also not uncommon to find one pioneer’s work

categorized as one approach by some historians,

and a different approach by others. With the institu-

tional approach, the root of the problem is multiple

definitions. Institutionalism is almost always said to

deal with channel intermediaries, although some

believe the discussion must involve the struggle by

various intermediaries to survive. Some scholars

even define marketing institutionalism in terms of

economic institutionalism, which is based on philos-

ophy and methodology as much as on subject

matter. Economic institutionalism typically held a

critical view of the economic system, which was not

always the case for marketing institutionalists.

Ultimately, Hollander advocated a definition of

institutionalism based on the writings of the nine-

teenth-century economist Amassa Walker, summa-

rized as the ‘description and prescription of methods

for organizing marketing agencies and practices’

(Hollander, 1980: 46).

Although not generally considered one of the tra-

ditional schools in marketing, another body of ideas

emerged during the 1930s with a focus on the geo-

graphic or spatial gaps between buyers and sellers.

This approach is associated with what Sheth et al.

(1988) labeled the regional school. Its founders are

E.T. Grether and William Reilly, whose 1931 book

Law of Retail Gravitation was most responsible for

the initial interest in the regional approach. Brown

stated that Reilly’s book ‘ranks among the classics

of marketing thought’ (Brown, 1994: 117). Babin

et al. (1994) noted that the earliest contributions to

the regional school coincided with great technologi-

cal improvements in the transportation infrastructure

in North America. They went on to trace the con-

nections between Reilly’s seminal work and that of

Converse in the 1940s and Huff in the 1960s, con-

cluding that those early writings were conceptually

simple, yet provided a scientifically rigorous frame-

work for studying the attraction of trade centers

through space and time. But it was Grether, who

used geographic concepts to develop a fairly broad

perspective of interregional trade, who is most iden-

tified with the approach (Sheth et al., 1988).

Other Ideas and Concepts

There are several topics relevant to the first half of

the twentieth century that do not fall neatly into the

major themes used in this section. Included is

research that examined influences from Scientific

Management on marketing ideas, changing definitions

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of the term marketing, and early developments in

consumer/buyer behavior theory.

In connection with previously cited work by

Jones and Monieson (1990) and Usui (2000), mention

was made of the influence of the pioneers of

Scientific Management, such as Taylor (1911) and

Gilbreth (1911), on Arch Shaw’s (1912) ideas about

marketing functions. It is surprising there hasn’t

been more historical study of the influence of

Scientific Management. One such history by

LaLonde and Morrison (1967), focused on the

period from World War I to 1930 and described

applications of Scientific Management to sales force

management by such writers as Lyon (1926) and

Hoyt (1912), and applications to marketing more

generally by Shaw (1912) and White (1927). An

interesting point made by LaLonde and Morrison

was that in 1924 the Bulletin of the Taylor Society

cited the J. Walter Thompson Company as the first

to apply the concept of market segmentation. While

the historical claim is debatable, it is interesting that

efficiency experts regarded segmentation as an

application of Scientific Management.

While many marketing historians have com-

mented on the problems associated with early termi-

nology and meaning, one study has traced the

definition of marketing as presented in principles

textbooks from 1900 to 1980. Lichtenthal and Beik

(1984) identified five distinct periods associated

with changes in that definition over 80 years. Early

periods saw marketing defined informally, as part of

economic production, or in terms of functions as

marketing developed into a discipline separate from

economics. Not surprisingly, they found that defini-

tions shifted towards a marketing management ori-

entation beginning with Alderson’s 1957 book,

Marketing Behavior and Executive Action.

A subdiscipline of marketing with a curious

history is consumer behavior. Neoclassical consumer

theory never seemed very useful to marketing practi-

tioners and, therefore, marketing academics pretty

much ignored it. But neither did they develop many

ideas of their own during the early twentieth century.

In fact, Sheth and Gross (1988) listed no concepts

before 1930 in their study of the parallel develop-

ments of the marketing discipline and consumer

behavior. During the 1930s, the most interest-

ing and potentially relevant consumer theory was

developed by home economists, most of whom were

women, and it is in that area that we find a lone his-

torical voice for the contributions of women to mar-

keting thought (Zuckerman and Carsky, 1990). In

particular, Zuckerman and Carsky have documented

the contributions of Hazel Kyrk (1929), Elizabeth

Hoyt (1928), and Christine Frederick (1923) as pio-

neers in educating consumers and in providing some

understanding of consumers to marketers.

Despite some important works on consumer

theory by home economists during the 1930s, as

marketing grew apart from economics, buyer behavior

received less and less attention from both groups

with a resulting lack of much focus on consumer

behavior until the formation of the Association for

Consumer Research in the early 1970s. The events

of that period, especially those between 1930 and

1950, were described by Mason (1994), who

focused on the causes of tension between marketing

practitioners, marketing academics, and economic

theorists during that period.

Chronologically as well as substantively, those

developments constituted a bridge with the modern

marketing management era that was marked by the

publication of Wroe Alderson’s Marketing Behavior

and Executive Action in 1957. Among the many other

fields of knowledge from which Alderson borrowed,

the behavioral sciences were the most important.

MARKETING MANAGEMENT ERA: POST 1957

This section begins by examining historical analyses

of the work of Wroe Alderson who pioneered the

development of marketing management. Alderson’s

work focused on developing a theory of the firm that

would enable marketing executives to make better

decisions. Thus Alderson moved the discipline from

a macro functions-institutions-commodities frame-

work to a micro marketing management paradigm.

Before Alderson, marketing academics were

primarily concerned with description and classifica-

tion. Alderson developed marketing theory in his

own writings, but he also played a major role in

stimulating others to do theoretical work by organi-

zing his renowned Marketing Theory Seminars.

Alderson’s ‘school’ of functionalism signaled the

beginning of a multidisciplinary movement in mar-

keting that led to several new schools of thought. In

this section we also review historical studies of

those developments. Part of that history includes the

formation of new associations and journals as well

as milestones celebrated by some of the original

institutions in the marketing discipline. Those have

also received historical attention and are discussed

in this section. Finally, this section ends with an

examination of research into the history of the

marketing concept.

Wroe Alderson and Functionalism

In his comments about Wroe Alderson’s Marketing

Behavior and Executive Action, Bartels observed

‘with one sweeping stroke [Alderson] created a new

pattern for considering marketing management’

(1988: 178). Together with Dynamic Marketing

Behavior in 1965, these two books represent the

fullest exposition of what Alderson called his ‘func-

tionalist theory’ of marketing. Sheth et al. (1988)

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admitted that, while they included functionalism as

one of their schools of marketing thought, it was

largely the result of a single scholar’s work.

Similarly, Barksdale (1980) noted that, while

Alderson had many followers, he did not establish a

tradition or school of scholars to continue his work.

As we discuss below, Alderson was widely recog-

nized as the leading marketing thinker of his time.

Yet curiously, other writers pursued few of

Alderson’s ideas after his death in 1965. The general

consensus seems to be that Alderson’s work was

unfinished, and only he could have finished it.

As Sheth et al. (1988) pointed out, functionalism

is not easy to summarize. It should not be confused

with the functional approach mentioned several

times earlier in this chapter. The latter was simply

concerned with identifying and classifying the basic

activities or work performed in marketing. Function-

alism was based on a systems approach to the study

of marketing and developed around three core con-

cepts: organized behavior systems, hetero-geneous

markets, and a unique concept Alderson termed

‘transvections’ (1965). A transvection is a set of

sequential transactions from the original seller of

raw materials, through intermediate purchases and

sales, to the final buyer of a finished product. The

transvection concept parallels a channel of distribu-

tion. Whereas a channel represents structure and is

analogous to the banks of a river, a transvection repre-

sents process and is analogous to the flowing water.

Alderson was much more concerned with develop-

ing theory than had been scholars working in the tra-

ditional schools of thought. Dynamic Marketing

Behavior included 150 hypotheses in one appendix,

titled ‘Research Agenda for Functionalism.’

Unfortunately, few of those hypotheses have been

tested and little was ever done to further develop

Alderson’s theory subsequent to his untimely death

in 1965. The most common reason for that given by

those who have studied Alderson’s work is that his

writings were difficult to comprehend. While he was

widely recognized as a brilliant and creative thinker,

his writing has been criticized for its confusing

terminology (Sheth et al., 1988), a lack of close

reasoning, and poor development of concepts

(Barksdale, 1980). In fact, many of the historical

reflections on Alderson’s work have consisted of

attempts to interpret various aspects of his theory.

Barksdale, for example, presented a detailed

summary of Alderson’s core concepts, mentioned

above, although he focused on the narrower concept of

‘sorting functions’ rather than ‘transvections.’ He

singled out the hypotheses proposed in Dynamic

Marketing Behavior as a goldmine for Ph.D.

students searching for dissertation topics, and

lamented the lack of empirical work on them since

their initial publication in 1965. Monieson and

Shapiro (1980) focused on biological and evolution-

ary dimensions of Alderson’s writing in order to clar-

ify ideas he had borrowed from the life sciences and

sociological thought. In the latter they singled out

writings by Talcott Parsons in social systems theory

and C. West Churchman in general systems theory,

and then speculated about how Alderson might have

used them to develop his general theory of market-

ing. Monieson and Shapiro concluded that, ‘given

Alderson’s prodigious and eclectic reading habits,

contemporary life science thought and research find-

ings would almost certainly have been incorporated

into a re-fashioned Alderson theory of marketing

behavior’ (1980: 7). Similarly, Rethans (1979)

examined more recent work in general systems

theory and used it to update Alderson’s theory of

functionalism.

Dawson and Wales (1979) looked at Alderson’s

writings in Cost and Profit Outlook, which was the

bulletin published from 1947 until 1958 by

Alderson’s consulting firm. Their focus was on

Alderson’s ideas about consumer motivation, care-

fully documenting examples from 22 different

issues of the bulletin. Like other historians of mar-

keting thought, they concluded that little of

Alderson’s work is now recognized and that almost

none of his concepts appear in leading principles

texts. Lusch (1980) also examined issues of Cost

and Profit Outlook to develop a profile of how

Alderson and his partner, Robert Sessions, viewed

the role of theory in marketing practice. A brief

history of the Alderson & Sessions consulting firm

was given, followed by an analysis of the bulletin’s

editorial content. It was clear Alderson believed that

theory should be communicated to managers, that

while marketing consultants and marketing scien-

tists had different purposes it was in the best inter-

ests of consultants to foster the development of

theory, and, more generally, the idea that theory and

practice go together hand in hand (Lusch, 1980).

Much has been made of Alderson’s efforts to

organize and stimulate other scholars to develop

marketing theory. Barksdale (1980) suggested that

Alderson’s efforts in this connection might have

been more important than his own theoretical con-

tributions. Dawson and Wales (1979: 222) agreed,

writing ‘one of the greatest contributions made by

Wroe Alderson to the field of marketing theory was

his organization of and leadership in the Marketing

Theory Seminars.’ These unusual and exclusive

conferences were held from 1951 until 1963, first at

the University of Colorado and later alternating

between Colorado and the University of Vermont.

As Sheth et al. described them,

These ‘invitation only’ seminars were used by Alderson

to both encourage those present to think of marketing in

conceptual ways and develop marketing theory, and also

to develop and explain the functionalist approach to

marketing. By his own powerful intellect and his domi-

nating personality, he was clearly ‘in charge’ of these

seminars and put his stamp on the introduction of a

formal theory approach to marketing science. (1988: 86)

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Despite their reputation, or perhaps because of it, the

theory seminars suffered the same posthumous fate

as Alderson’s unfinished theoretical work. It wasn’t

until 1979 that the profile of marketing theory was

renewed in the Marketing Theory Conferences, now

named the AMA Winter Educators’ Conference.

Clearly, historians believe that marketing scholars

have ignored Alderson and his functionalist ideas,

and we have paid a considerable intellectual price

for this ignorance. However, there is ongoing inter-

est in Alderson’s work by marketing historians, and

that pursuit may yet rekindle a broader interest in

some of those ideas.

Functionalism is one the post-traditional

‘schools,’ but is treated separately here because of

the relatively greater interest in it by marketing his-

torians. Along with the institutionalism of Breyer

(1934), Duddy and Revson (1947), and Vaile,

Grether and Cox (1952), Alderson’s (1957, 1965)

functionalism has evolved into the marketing

systems school of thought. For example, Savitt

(1990) elaborated on the ‘systemic’ ideas found in

textbooks by Fred Clark (1922, 1932), Ralph Breyer

(1934), Duddy and Revzan (1947), and Vaile,

Grether and Cox (1952). These ideas clearly influ-

enced Alderson’s thinking about marketing systems.

Savitt traced several propositions, which he consid-

ered to be antecedents to both modern macro-

marketing thought and systems analysis through the

books listed above. All of them addressed such

questions as: why society requires a marketing

system? how the system operates? environmental

and institutional factors affecting marketing, and the

boundaries between marketing and other social

institutions – harkening back to similar discussions

by ancient and medieval scholars. These ideas were

transmitted from Alderson to several of his students,

such as Fisk (1967) and Dixon (1967).

The remainder of this section relies heavily on

Sheth et al. (1988). In addition to the previously dis-

cussed schools of thought, Sheth et al. identified

several others that emerged during or following

Alderson’s work. Along with marketing systems,

two other schools were linked directly to Alderson’s

functionalism: marketing management, and social

exchange.

Modern Schools of Marketing Thought

The managerial school emerged during the late

1950s and was represented in books such as

Alderson’s Marketing Behavior and Executive

Action (1957), Howard’s Marketing Management

(1957), Kelley and Lazer’s Managerial Marketing:

Perspectives and Viewpoints (1958), and McCarthy’s

Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. (1960)

Ideas such as the marketing concept, marketing

myopia, marketing mix, and market segmentation,

were popularized in a series of influential articles by

scholars such as Borden (1964), Keith (1960), Levitt

(1960), and McKitterick (1957), and continue to be

popular in textbooks today. One idea, the marketing

concept, has more recently been the subject of

intense, critical analysis by marketing historians,

and that research is reviewed in a separate section

below. Sheth et al. (1988) described the managerial

school as the most comprehensive and influential in

the discipline, a status that continues today. It has

had a tremendous influence, not only in the class-

room, but in the profession as well.

Next to the managerial school, the greatest impact

on the discipline has been by the consumer/buyer

behavior school. If economic thinking and

approaches dominated the first half of the twentieth

century, then the last half was dominated by ideas

from the behavioral sciences. In contrast to func-

tionalism, the buyer behavior school is not associ-

ated with any one dominant scholar, such as

Alderson, and has benefited from ideas developed

by numerous scholars in many different disciplines

outside of marketing. Sheth et al. (1988) identified

three areas of research that emerged during the

1950s which laid the foundation for the buyer

behavior school: motivation research, social deter-

minants of consumer behavior, and household

decision-making. During the 1960s there was grow-

ing interest in brand loyalty behavior and a new

research tradition based on laboratory experiments

and experimental design. Comprehensive theories

(Engel, Kollat & Blackwell, 1968; Howard & Sheth,

1969) of consumer/buyer behavior also gained pop-

ularity during this period. Research and interest in

consumer/buyer behavior experienced phenomenal

growth during the 1970s. This was stimulated by

two important developments: the formation in 1970

of the Association for Consumer Research, and the

publication of the Journal of Consumer Research

beginning in 1974. Many of these developments

were also described by Mittelstaedt (1990), who

ascribed the status of ‘subdiscipline’ to consumer

behavior.

While critics of the marketing process have long

written about the imbalance of power between

buyers and sellers and about marketing malpractices,

Sheth et al. (1988) suggest it is only since the 1960s

that marketing scholars have participated in that dis-

cussion. They label this the activist school of mar-

keting thought. Similar concerns about the role of

business in society gave rise to the macromarketing

school, which has focused on the role and impact of

marketing activities on society and vice versa. Of

course, a macro focus on marketing existed, cer-

tainly in the traditional schools and even in the mar-

keting ideas of earlier economists. Instititionalists

were interested in how channels could be structured

more efficiently for the ultimate benefit of con-

sumers. During the 1970s a critical mass of research

began to look at channels of distribution again, this

time with a focus on the goals and needs of channel

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members. This organizational dynamics school

added social psychological concepts such as ‘power,’

‘conflict,’ and ‘cooperation’ to the discussion.

According to Sheth et al. (1988), books written by

Holloway and Hancock (1964) and by Fisk (1967)

signaled a new level of interest in macromarketing,

and were accompanied by conferences beginning in

the 1970s under the leadership of Charles Slater, and

the publication of the Journal of Macromarketing,

starting in 1981.

One last school of thought, according to Sheth

et al., is also associated with Alderson, based on his

1965 Law of Exchange. The so-called social

exchange school focuses on exchange as the funda-

mental concept of marketing. Some contributors to

this line of research included Kotler and Bagozzi

during the 1970s and Hunt during the 1980s (Sheth

et al., 1988), along with critics of social exchange,

such as Shaw and Dixon (1980).

Continuing Development of the

Marketing Literature

In the previous section we mentioned the formation

of the Association for Consumer Research and the

founding of new journals, such as the Journal of

Consumer Research and Journal of Macromarketing,

connected with some of the modern schools of

thought. Other scholarly organizations have formed

in the past few decades, such as the Academy of

Marketing Science, and there are too many new

journals to list here. Indeed, the marketing literature

has grown so much in size and complexity, includ-

ing health care marketing, sports marketing, and

non-profit marketing, that the sort of sweeping

review conducted by Bartels in the 1960s may no

longer be possible. The 1988 edition of Bartels’

History of Marketing Thought did not even attempt

to update the vast number of new textbooks pub-

lished since the previous edition of 1976.

Published since 1936, the Journal of Marketing

(JM) is the oldest surviving academic periodical pub-

lished about general marketing (in fact, the Journal of

Retailing precedes JM by some 20 years). In 1976 the

JM published a 40-year retrospective on its content by

analyzing the number of articles over time in 12 sub-

ject categories (Grether, 1976). The ‘highest continu-

ing interest’ was in marketing research, marketing

mix variables, and marketing management. This

reflected the dominant influence of the managerial

school. Areas of ‘medium and relatively stable

interest’ included consumer behavior, the role of

government, marketing institutions, marketing

theory, international marketing, and the role of

marketing in society. In this grouping we see the

rising interest that soon became associated with

schools of thought such as consumer behavior and

macromarketing. (Remember as well that Grether’s

retrospective was published on the 40th anniversary

of JM, just two years after the Journal of Consumer

Research and four years before the Journal of

Macromarketing began publication.) Areas of ‘low-

est relative interest’ in 1976 were marketing educa-

tion, industry studies, and marketing history. One of

these, marketing education, now claims its own

specialized journal and another, marketing history,

has become a regular section in the Journal of

Macromarketing, as well as the subject of a new

online journal that began publication in 2001. It is

noteworthy that marketing history was included

among the 12 categories in Grether’s 1976 review.

Although the subject had disappeared from JM’s

pages by 1976, marketing history had been a theme

for a substantial number of articles published during

the first two decades of the Journal’s history.

Grether also commented about surveys of JM’s

readers carried out during the 1950s and 1970s. The

first survey in 1956 left the impression that the JM

was a ‘stodgy, long-hair booklet written by imprac-

tical scholars, in terminology not understood by

laymen, containing boring articles arranged in a way

which makes them hard to find’ (1976: 68). This

was an image that became hard to shake. A subse-

quent survey in the 1970s reinforced the image as

too academic, even for the academic readers!

In 1996 JM celebrated its 60th anniversary with a

history of its editorial orientation and literary con-

tent (Kerin, 1996). This retrospective included

insights into the tensions between the predecessors

of the AMA and the JM. It also elaborated on the

ideals and goals of the Journal, as well as the lack of

direction JM seemed to experience during the 1950s.

Further shifts in editorial policy occurred to make

the JM more scholarly after 1979 and to narrow its

scope so that articles dealing with methods and

models were directed to its sister periodical, the

Journal of Marketing Research. During this period,

the JM transformed itself into a scholarly profes-

sional journal, and various measures of impact sug-

gest that its influence and quality were growing.

In his analysis of the literary history of the JM,

Kerin developed themes for each of its six decades,

which added insights to the frequency counts of ear-

lier retrospectives. The changing themes again

reflected the shift during the 1960s to managerial

concerns, and during the 1970s to buyer behavior.

Subsequent to those influences, Kerin described the

period 1976–1985 as one which viewed marketing

as a decision science. Not surprisingly, practitioner

authorship had fallen to less than 1% by 1982, from

the 42% reported in Applebaum’s original analysis

in 1947. Finally, for the period 1986–1995, Kerin

described the content of the JM as reflecting

marketing as an integrative science. Average article

length had grown considerably; the number of refer-

ences per article had increased by 600% over those

of the 1970s. These changes reflected attempts to

integrate a larger literature. In addition, a quarter of

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the articles published in this last period featured

integrative conceptual frameworks and an inter-

disciplinary approach. In his concluding comments,

Kerin observed that more than 3000 articles were

published during the JM’s 60-year history, making it

an indispensable archive for those wishing to track

developments and changes in marketing thought

over time.

The Standard Chronology: Production–

Sales–Marketing Concept Eras

One historical hypothesis has come to be cynically

known by marketing historians as the ‘standard

chronology.’ The standard chronology hypothesizes

that marketing went through a sequence of three

eras, from a production orientation to a sales orien-

tation to the marketing orientation/concept. In 1960,

Keith proposed that American business was under-

going a revolution in the way it treated customers.

He called it the ‘marketing oriented era’ and its core

characteristics have been immortalized in the ‘mar-

keting concept.’ According to Keith, this marketing

oriented era had been preceded, first, by a produc-

tion era between 1870 and 1930 when businesses

supposedly had to focus on production because of

excessive demand for most consumer products. This

was followed by a sales era, beginning around 1930,

when a collapse in consumer demand forced busi-

nesses to emphasize selling in order to ‘dispose of

all the products we make at a favorable price’

(Keith, 1960: 36). This inherently historical hypoth-

esis of production–sales–marketing eras was based

on evidence from a single company (Pillsbury) for

which its author was then Executive Vice-President.

Even the case for Pillsbury was based solely on

Keith’s personal recollections and ignored the fact

that it was a conservative company that was engaged

primarily in a commodity business. It also ignored

the tremendous amount of consumer marketing that

its leading (and much more successful) competitor,

Washburn-Crosby (later General Mills), had prac-

ticed for 30 or 40 years. Surprisingly, Keith’s

chronology has become accepted wisdom in almost

every principles textbook today. That status persists

in spite of thorough and convincing historical schol-

arship that contradicts it.

One of those critics, Hollander (1986), began by

carefully explaining the implications of the ordering

and timing of the three eras for assumptions about

the levels and types of consumer demand that would

have necessarily accompanied each era. He also

listed the sorts of marketing activities that would not

have existed prior to the marketing era if businesses

had not embraced the marketing concept prior to

that period in time. Hollander presented economic

statistics that clearly demonstrated that the US

market absorbed a substantial and increasing

amount of discretionary purchases between 1900

and 1941, including many new products and product

modifications. He recounted well-known facts about

developments in marketing education and the pro-

fession to demonstrate the sheer number and magni-

tude of marketing activities and institutions there

must have been well before 1950 when the market-

ing era supposedly began. Examples of marketing

activities, such as product planning to meet cus-

tomer preferences, integration of promotional

efforts, customer service, merchandising functions,

and employment of a profit criterion, were detailed

for firms such as Eastman Kodak, John Deere,

General Electric, Washburn-Crosby (General

Mills), and Proctor & Gamble, all of which sug-

gested a marketing orientation. Statistics on the

number of traveling salesmen in the US during the

1880s indicated the way in which firms reached out

to their customers and competed for business.

Examples of market research as early as 1911 were

reported, and many large companies were doing an

extensive amount of such research by the 1930s.

Hollander identified 14 companies that carried out

large-scale consumer surveys at that time. Evidence

of internal coordination of marketing activities was

given for DuPont and General Electric as well as in

the reports of the Taylor Society. The simplification

movement initiated by the Hoover government

during World War I was used as evidence of the

product diversification and market segmentation

which simplification was designed to ‘correct.’

Product diversification and market segmentation,

however, are hallmarks of the marketing concept.

Hollander then drew on accounting history to

demonstrate clearly a profit orientation that existed

at least as early as 1940, and cited the views of

department store magnate, E.A. Filene, on profit-

based pricing practices used in 1927. Hollander’s

historical analysis leaves no doubt that sales era

tactics and marketing era activities have been prac-

ticed and thought about at least as long as those

associated with the production era.

Fullerton’s 1988 study came to similar conclu-

sions by focusing on the case for, and against, a pro-

duction era. His research uncovered evidence for

Britain, Germany, and the US that confirmed that

serious and sophisticated marketing is not a recent

phenomenon, as suggested by the ‘myth of the pro-

duction era,’ nor was it exclusive to America.

Fullerton cites numerous examples of producers’

involvement with marketing mix strategies for the

period 1870 to 1930 as well as examples of market-

ing education that developed in Germany and the

US during the 1890s. His conclusion was that there

was no production era, and the development of

modern marketing was well under way by the time

the Great Depression was supposed to have ushered

in the sales era.

At the beginning of this chapter we suggested that

the most obvious justification for history is that

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people who don’t know theirs are doomed to repeat

past mistakes. There is no better example of this

than the persistence of this infamous, misleading

doctrine. Hollander included in his study a conve-

nience sample of 25 general marketing textbooks

from the mid-1980s that adhered to the ‘standard

chronology.’ Surprisingly, and disappointingly, that

situation has changed little since the publication of

the two historical studies described above.

LOOKING BACK TO SEE AHEAD: FUTURE

RESEARCH ON THE PAST

It has been said that every generation re-writes

history. That being the case, future marketing histo-

rians will continue to document and argue ideas

about marketing behavior back to antiquity. They

will continue to explore the connections between

early scholarship in marketing, its parent discipline

of economics, and its sister discipline of manage-

ment. They will continue to trace their intellectual

genealogy and interpret the achievements of their

teachers and grand-teachers. And a discipline that

has grown more tolerant during the past 20 years of

its history being written will hopefully continue to

welcome this work.

Since the early 1980s there has been a new level

of interest in historical research in marketing. It has

helped create what Hollander and Rassuli (1993)

call the ‘New’ marketing history (p. xv). Beginning

in 1983, under the leadership of Stanley Hollander

and with the support of Michigan State University, a

marketing history conference has been held bienni-

ally in North America with a steadily increasing

level of participation from scholars around the

globe. Proceedings have been published for all

10 conferences to date including a total of 313

papers.* An Association for Historical Research in

Marketing has been formed as a support structure for

CHARM (Conference on Historical Analysis &

Research in Marketing), and to promote interest and

research in marketing history and the history of mar-

keting thought. Other marketing history conferences

have been organized and two were held at the

University of Reading in the UK in 1991 and 1993.

Both the Academy of Marketing Science and

American Marketing Association held conferences

in 1988 where marketing history was a major theme.

And the Association for Consumer Research hosted

a conference in 1985 on historical perspectives in

consumer research. The Journal of the Academy of

Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, and

Journal of Public Relations have all published

special issues focusing on marketing history. Since

1994, the Journal of Macromarketing, which has

always been hospitable to historical research, has

featured a regular section on historical research and,

as of the summer of 2001, had published 64 marketing

history articles, commentaries, and reviews. And, an

online journal titled the Journal of Marketing

History has recently been established. The ‘new’

marketing history has sought to build on the tradi-

tion of history developed during the early decades of

marketing scholarship, but it has primarily focused

on marketing history and only secondarily on the

history of marketing thought.

The opening section of this chapter started with

Hollander’s observation about the symbiotic

relationship between marketing thought and market-

ing practice. Hollander has gone even further.

The long-standing distinction between economic history

and the history of economic thought provides a model for

a similar dichotomy in marketing. Perhaps the two types

of histories in economics is not a perfect model for us …

I have come to really wonder why we want to teach our

doctoral students the history of marketing thought with-

out teaching them the history of marketing. (1980: 45–6)

Hollander’s (1986) own historical analysis of the

standard chronology, discussed in the previous

section, serves as a model for integrating the two. He

weaves together evidence of both the ideas and prac-

tice of modern marketing. We will write better history

of marketing thought if we consider the work of both

marketing scholars and marketing practitioners.

Hollander also raises the issue of doctoral seminars

on the history of marketing thought. Once a fairly

common requirement in Ph.D. programs in North

America, that is no longer the case. There are only a

few universities that regularly offer its doctoral

students a full course in the subject. Some include a

session or two, but it is embarrassing how little expo-

sure doctoral students receive to what should be an

indispensable aspect of graduate education in any dis-

cipline. More needs to be done about this.

Very little research has been written about the role

of women in the development of marketing thought.

The sad truth is that most business teachers during

the early twentieth century were male, but there

have been exceptions. Zuckerman and Carsky

(1990) looked in an unconventional place – home

economics – to find their women pioneer marketing

scholars. Perhaps we need to look for more such

sources.

Very few historical studies have been made of

marketing thought outside the US. We now know

some of that history for Canada, Japan, and Germany.

Hollander (1998) recently cited a rich collection of

interesting marketing books published in England

during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The first uni-

versity business program in the British Empire was

started at the University of Birmingham in 1901

when there still were only a handful in the US. But

INTRODUCTION60

* This is a thorough, but not exhaustive, review. All but a

handful of conference proceedings papers are omitted.

Swen3033-02.qxd 6/19/02 9:31 PM Page 60

we know little more about the development of

marketing thought in England. More historical

research should be done on marketing thought out-

side the US.

As discussed in an earlier section, even in his last,

(1988), edition Bartels virtually ignored the bur-

geoning literature in the field of consumer behavior.

One reviewer of Sheth et al.’s 1988 book lamented

the lack of detail and scope in the discussion about

the consumer behavior school (Johnson, 1990). The

same could be said of their discussion of the man-

agerial school of marketing thought. Other histori-

ans have examined the development of particular

ideas or concepts, but no one has attempted a care-

ful and comprehensive historical analysis. These

two bodies of research, marketing management and

consumer behavior, have dominated the literature

for the past 30 or 40 years, yet there has been little

historical study of that development.

There should be more use of primary source mate-

rials in our historical research, and they are becom-

ing available in surprising quantities. Most university

archives collect, as a matter of policy, the papers of

important faculty members. As a consequence there

are often considerable collections of personal papers

that have been donated to universities by their retired

or deceased marketing professors, providing impor-

tant source materials for biographical research. The

contents of these collections range from curriculum

vitae to unpublished autobiographies, diaries, lecture

notes, unpublished papers, and correspondence.

Typically, such collections are held closed for a

certain period of time, a waiting period to provide

some measure of security and privacy, before open-

ing them to researchers. Many such collections are

now open to researchers and the list of available col-

lections reads like a who’s who of pioneer marketing

scholars. Jones (1998) recently summarized the con-

tents of several such collections.

Ultimately, for almost any marketing idea in

which the reader is interested, there is a history.

Whatever your subject of interest, we heartily

encourage you to investigate its history. History

provides insights not found in other forms of

analysis. It will help you appreciate the subject’s

complexity. It will teach you to recognize changes

and consistencies in its meaning over time. It will

add a new dimension to your understanding of

the issues. And we suspect you will find the task

interesting and enjoyable. All research should be

such fun!

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