RETROSPECTIVES IN MARKETING

A Newsletter of the History of Marketing and Marketing Thought
Published by Michigan State University
The Eli Broad College of Business
February, 2001, Vol. 14 No. 2

10^TH CHARM NEWS

As RIM went to press, this final update came in before the 10^th Conference on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing (CHARM) descends on Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. If you haven't yet registered for the Conference but would like to, forms for registration as well as membership in the Association for Historical Research in Marketing are now available on the CHARM website at www.upei.ca/~charm. The conference site will be the Regal University Hotel in Durham, toll free 1-800-633-5379 or www.regal-hotels.com. Early registration (at the lower fee) must be postmarked by April 13. For further information about late registration, fees, and other registration requirements, please check the conference website or contact the Program Chair, Brian Jones, bjones@upei.ca or (902) 566-0613. The Conference dates are May 17 through 20.

By the time readers receive this issue of RIM, the complete conference program including abstracts of all papers being presented at the Conference will also be available on the CHARM website. The 10^th CHARM program promises a very interesting mix of papers authored by representatives from five different countries. Participants can expect about 40 presenters at the Conference including keynote speaker Dr. Richard Pollay of the University of British Columbia, and a distinguished panel of marketing scholars emeritus. Management Horizon's Chairman Emeritus, William R. Davidson has also been confirmed to speak on "A Fifty Year Retrospective on Retailing and Marketing Principles."

Local arrangements chair, Ellen Gartrell of the Hartman Center at Duke University, has arranged for an exciting sale of hundreds of very old books on marketing and advertising as well as thousands of old advertising tearsheets. This event promises an unusual opportunity for bibliophiles and collectors of marketing and advertising history. The Hartman Center website has more information at http://scriptorium.lib.edu/Hartman/ or call Ellen Gartrell at 919-660-5836.

As the Conference dates draw closer, watch the CHARM website for additional information.

MARKETING HISTORY PERMEATES JMM

The December 2000 issue of JMM is dominated by marketing history materials. It includes: "The Interpretation of Arch Wilkinson Shaw's Thought by Japanese Scholars" by Kazuo Usui, "Evidence of a Marketing Periodic Literature within the American Economic Association: 1895-1936" by David Bussiere, "A Pathfinding Study of

Consumption" by Roger Mason and "Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and the Landscape of Marketing History" by Pamela Walker Laird.

IT'S NOT GOING TO BE YOUR GRANDCHILD'S

At least all of RIM''s American readers probably know by now that General Motors plans to phase out the Oldsmobile nameplate over the next three to five years. RIM, however, could not let this pass without a tribute to its Lansing, Michigan neighbor, reportedly the second oldest automotive brand in the world and the oldest in the U.S., having been established in 1897. GM has also announced that it will reduce its overall American model array by about 20%. Is this a forerunner of a tendency to make all of the talk that we have heard during the past few years about mass customization a matter of marketing history? One can argue that two opposing trends are constantly at work in marketing product management: one toward product standardization and product line simplification, the other toward product diversification. We marketing gurus can always have something to say by oscillating between proclaiming the predominance of one and then the other of these two trends.

VIRTUAL MARKETING HISTORY JOURNAL ANNOUNCED

NTC Publications Ltd. and the History of Advertising Trust have announced plans for a network-based Journal of Marketing History that will accept articles dealing with marketing, advertising, retailing, media, and public relations history from the 19^th century and beyond onto the present day. Conceivably, the Journal may add a hard copy version. It seeks a professional as well as an academic audience so the wedding style will be of importance. The editor-in-chief will be Professor Douglas West of the South Bank Business School in London. Further information is available at the following website: www.warc.com/jmh. Journal plans are just being formulated. RIM has not received details concerning frequency of revision or replacement of the web material, article length limits, and copy style requirements or the like at the time of writing.

SPORT BETTING ON THE INTERNET

"From Back Street to Side Street to High Street to E Street," by Peter Jones, Colin M. Clarke-Hill and David Hillier, Retail and Distribution Management, Vol. 28, No. 6-7, 2000 traces the development of growth of the British gaming industry over the last forty years. At least some of the play is now moving from the traditional bedding shops to internet play on major sporting events.

CANDY IS DANDY

Our British friends at HAT strongly recommend Sweet Talk: A Secret History of Confectionary by Nicholas Whittaker (Phoenix, 1999), 248 pp. This is a history of candy and the confectionary trade. Most of the British brand names will probably be unfamiliar to U.S. readers but they will be gratified to learn of how they escaped one World War II sugar rationing concept: Woolton's Wonders. Those were carrots topped with toffee, allegedly designed to improve eyesight.

RETAILING ANTIQUES ASSEMBLED

The American Collegiate Retailing Association (National Association of University Teachers of Retailing) and the Academy of Marketing Science held their tri-annial joint meeting in Columbus, Ohio on November 2-5, 2000. One feature was a panel of four experienced, mature, vintage retailing instructors: Bill Davidson (Ohio State University and Management Horizons), Morris Mayer (University of Alabama), Eleanor May (Harvard University and University of Virginia), and Stan Hollander (Michigan State University). They discussed how the world had changed since they had started in the craft. Leigh Sparks of Sterling University, gave the one avowedly historical paper of the conference under the title: "Presenting Products: Argos Catalogs in 1973 and 1998." Others present were well known to marketing historians included: Mary Carsky, Jay Lindquist, William H. Bolen, Sevgin Eroglu, Linda K. Good, Carol Kaufman-Scarborough, Brenda Sternquist, and Martin Topol.

The HAT (History of Advertising Trust) Newsletter highly recommends Smoking in British Culture: 1800-2000 by Matthew Hilton (Manchester, England, Manchester University Press, 2000, 284 pp.). It is one of a series on the history of popular culture to be published by Manchester University.

The History of Advertising Trust is attempting to compile a master list of important dates in advertising, not only in the United Kingdom but also elsewhere in the world. Among other things it is anxious for lists of significant advertising dates in the U.S. Apparently, it expects to collect these lists through an exchange with the J. Walter Thompson Archives at Duke University. So any RIM readers who want to contribute such information can either do it directly through HAT at: HAT House, 12 Raveningham Centre, Raveningham, Norwich NR14 6NU or through Ellen Gartrell at Duke University, Box 90185, Durham, NC 27708. You could bring your list with you when you go to Duke for the 10^th Conference in May.

J. WALTER THOMPSON AWARDS

The J.W. Hartman Center for Sales Advertising and Marketing History at Duke University has once again announced the availability of three $1000 research grants to support study at the Center. Several smaller travel grants are also available in connection with the research grants or on a stand alone basis. As usual, the announcement comes too late for our Fall issue but the deadline is too early for the Spring issue. Marketing history scholars who might be interested should make note, nevertheless, of this possibility for next year and remain in touch with the Hartman Center.

EXHIBITS

The William F. Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design, 208 N. Water Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is located in the historic Third Ward, once the center of Milwaukee's commercial life and now a regentrified district of theaters, studios and art galleries. Its own building, an architectural gem, is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. Exhibits listed in a news release received in December include "Burma Shave," a surprisingly small company (35 employees at most) that impacted the shaving cream market from 1925 to 1963 with short a series of four small roadside signs containing amusing jingles: "His beard was rough and course. That caused his fifth divorce." A Milwaukee beer exhibit is also mounted to compare and contrast with the Guinness Beer advertising. An exhibit of over 125 shopping bags is on display and there is a substantial exhibit on the history of automotive styling and the evolution of the annual model change. A unique marketing research exhibit concerned with consumer motivation and profiling allows visitors to complete a lifestyle questionnaire and learn its implications for marketing ethics. Spring exhibits include one on typography and another on the work of famous designer William Glaser and a history of phonograph record/CD album covers. One interesting permanent feature of the Museum is a interactive radio recording booth where visitors can follow a teleprompter to record a randomly selected commercial and be rated upon their delivery and interpretive skills. A television gallery provides an opportunity to watch selected videos on TV advertising.

RIM has mentioned the Gilroy "Guinness is Good For You" exhibit sponsored by the History of Advertising Trust that enjoyed a successful two-year run in Great Britain. It paid a quick visit, October-February, at the William F. Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design in Milwaukee.

THE BEAT IS PRESERVED

The City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, one of the original sources of the beat generation counter-cultural phenomenon has been placed on the register of National Historical Sites. RIM wonders whether establishment preservation of an anti-establishment institution constitutes ultimate success or total failure.

AMS PLANS LEGENDARY SERIES

The Academy of Marketing Science is currently mulling plans for a "marketing legend" series to be placed in its website. This will be another historical venture that hopes to video tape particularly important marketing academic and practitioner contributions. Plans are not yet set. For example, no decision has been reached as to whether the series will include only living or also earlier marketing pioneers. If the latter decision rule obtains, then plans have to be made concerning presentation techniques, etc.

This sounds like a very worthy endeavor, but a word of caution should also be offered. About thirty years ago, the American Marketing Association prepared two series of film interviews with prominent marketers for both archival and classroom purposes. Professor William Davidson of The Ohio State University was responsible for six and the RIM editor was in charge of the other half dozen. The Association invested very little money in the activity and there was a tremendous amount of frustration involved concerning the provision of studio facilities. Six films consisted of interviews of leading marketing teachers conducted by their former students. They are interesting and it is gratifying to see someone like Theodore Beckman still responding in characteristic style on the screen. But they are devoid of tension and dramatic input. There's a very strong atmosphere of "Oh master, please tell me how you achieved such a brilliant insight." The other six consist of discussions between people who might be expected to have rather opposing viewpoints on some subject, e.g. the consumerist and the head of a leading advertising agency. In all cases, they strove so hard for civility and a consensus that little excitement developed. The discussion simply did not get beneath the surface. If the new series is to be really worthwhile, it will be necessary to direct subjects and interviewers very carefully to strive for excitement rather than charm. Maybe we have all been spoiled by seeing or hearing too many talk shows on radio and TV. But this is the sort of activity that can be very, very useful if well done and dreadfully banal if not skillfully executed. The films were never properly archived and most have been lost over the years.

The Economic and Business Historical Society will hold it's 2001 meeting April 26-28 in Albany, New York. For further information go to EBHS's web page: www.ebhsoc.org.

The Seligman Collection at the Bass Archives, the Henry Bass Archives at the University of Oklahoma is one of America's outstanding collections of business history materials. One interesting component of this marvelous collection is the Seligman data. Jacob Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, began work as an itinerant peddler, and then became a storekeeper and merchant. Over time he used his savings to bring all his brothers and his sister to this country. Eventually in 1862, the family transformed their business into one of the country's largest and most prestigious investment banking firms. Some of the material in the vast collection, particularly family correspondence and some other material, deal with the storekeeping and merchant experience although the emphasis in the holding is on the investment bank business. Some of that would be of considerable interest to anyone concerned with the background of bank marketing history. Considerable details concerning the Collection appear in the Spring 2000 issue of the Business History Review.

IN MEMORIUM

Although Sears Roebuck and Co. became the better known name during the last half century, Montgomery Ward was the older general mail order house. It's 100^th anniversary was commemorated by a postage stamp. Under the affectionate nickname "Monkey Ward," it occupied a prominent place in the American retail scene. For perhaps the last twenty-five years or so, it had often seemed on the verge of rebirth and revitalization. Drastic merchandizing and display changes notwithstanding, as most RIM readers know, Montgomery Ward announced closure and an intention to seek bankruptcy protection immediately after the end of the very disappointing Christmas shopping season to the thousand. A detailed history of the firm's struggles and its ultimate defeat would be a very appropriate subject for a marketing history study.

A PERMANENT RECORD OF CONTEMPORARY EPHEMERA

The History of Advertising Trust newsletter informs us of the publication of The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian, London: British Library, 2000, by the Late Maurice Rickards, edited and completed by Michael Twyman, 35£. The volume covers a wide range of materials such as bus tickets, bills, lottery tickets, comics, and especially advertising. Rickard's collection was housed at the University of Reading which is something of a center for business and marketing history.

GLOBALIZED RETAILING

Issue 4/5 of the International Marketing Review, MCB Press University Press, 2000, was devoted to international retailing. Many of the articles have an historical flavor. These include: "Study Retailing and See The World," by Stanley C. Hollander; "The Retail Internationalization Process," by Nicholas Alexander and Hayley Myers; "Foreign Entry Into British Retailing 1850-1994," by Andrew Godley and Scott Fletcher; and "7 Eleven Japan and the Southland Corporation: A Marriage of Convenience," by Leigh Sparks.

THINKING AND BUILDING BIG

From November 2000 to April 2001, the American Building Museum in Washington D.C. will hold an exhibit "Monuments, Mills, and Missiles" devoted to the work of the Historic Architectural Engineering Record. HAER was established 30 years ago to provide documentation about important American structures and engineering projects. It has accumulated a massive archive under the supervision of the National Park Service and maintained at the Library of Congress. This provides the record of much of America's most important industrial development, much of which has important marketing history implications.

The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) has announced the release of OECD Historical Statistics: 1960-1997, a selection of economic variables, 1999 edition on CD rom. The collection includes a good many national accounts, price, population, labor force, domestic finance and foreign trade statistics for the OECD countries. The database uses Beyond 20/20 for Windows permits extraction of data in various forms. Priced at $149 it is available from OECD Washington Center, 2001 L Street, N.W., Suite 650, Washington D.C., 20036-4922.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

According to a Princeton Classics professor, interviewed on National Public Radio in October, one of the earliest auctions with which she is familiar were those held by Babylonian villages CA third century BC to dispose of marriageable females. The young women were ranked in attractiveness under rules and according to criteria which she did not describe, and then were auctioned off in that order. The most attractive ones, of course, drew high bids. But the money was retained as the suitor willingness ebbed and was eventually used to provide increasing dowries in inverse correlation with attractiveness for the remainder. There was no discussion of the possibility of an enterprising young couple taking action to minimize the prospective brides' attractiveness and thus inducing a dowry. But neither did the classicist explain how the village elders managed to make the market clear exactly of what was done about surplus or deficit revenues. Certainly there's some excellent dissertation research opportunities here for the aspiring young marketing scholar who wants to terminate a promising career early. Those who wish to know more about auctions should turn to Auctions and Auctioneering by Ralph Cassidy, Jr. (1967), Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press. Cassidy's historical chapter confirms the classicist's remarks although it attributes the auctions to the fifth century and cites Herodotus as a source. Cassidy traveled around the world (there are some scholars who consider geography a form of history) and reported on all the varieties of auctioneering methods he encountered. There are more of them than you would expect. Incidentally, he also describes a fair amount of auctioneering in ancient Rome and medieval China.

C&A FASHION HISTORY GOES TO HAT

C&A, a large, international, popular price clothing chain is having serious difficulties these days and is closing many of its Western European operations. As it closes its British stores, it is turning over an almost 50 year run of fashion advertising to the History of Advertising Trust. This, along with some archival collections the Trust already holds, will provide very extensive documentation of recent fashion trends in Britain.

C&A was developed by the Brennekmayer family of Amsterdam. It never was able to establish a foothold in the United States although it experimented with an entry into Brooklyn, New York during the Depression. It subsequently purchased the Orbach Stores in New York and Los Angeles. But it was regarded as the owner of a miraculous marketing secret for reaching its European audience during the post World War II period. The editor of RIM once interviewed one of the Brennekmayer's. He was received extremely courteously, given coffee and a pastry, and treated to an extremely interesting, even if totally irrelevant, lecture on Dutch canal house architecture before finding himself out on the street. A colleague at Baruch was delighted when he learned that one of the young Brennekmayer's was going to attend his classes in pursuit of a master's degree and thought he would gain entry to the secret. It turned out that the information transfer all went one way and none of it originated in Holland. It is probably that there never was really any secret, but rather that the company executives of that period had a remarkable sense of what their audience wanted and how to get it to them at the price they could pay.

PEOPLE AND PERSONALITIES

Peggy Cunningham from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, who played a big role in arranging the 8^th C.H.A.R.M. Conference in Kingston, is now book review editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

HISTORY OF PACKAGING EXHIBIT

Diana Twede, School of Packaging, Michigan State University and the MSU Museum are, literally, wrapping up plans for a major exhibit on the history of packaging to be displayed in East Lansing from February 24 to August 25, 2002. Diana will be hard-put to contain all the details when she unloads the story at the Duke meeting. She says this exhibit will really deliver the goods.

In November, the second Scully Prize was awarded by the National Building Museum to Jane Jacobs for her 1961 book, The Death and Life of American Cities. Jacobs, as many RIM readers know, posed the construction of high-rises, massive rebuilding projects and superhighways. She believed smaller scale mixed use developments provide much healthier, urbane environments of particular interest to marketers. She held that local retailers provided a kind of policing or controlling factor in city neighborhoods and thus were a source of security.

Lisa Penaloza's "Winning Western," Journal of Marketing, October, 2000 discusses the importance of cultural values in determining and influencing marketing behavior. She places particular emphasis upon industry history as a source of current behavior. For this purpose, she draws upon an in-depth historical, ethnographic analysis of the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo. Readers are aware that the term "stock" here refers not to the bears and the bulls of Wall Street, but to the livestock of the untrammeled west. Penaloza teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

THE LITERATURE KEEPS GROWING

Note: Ranger Roger's suggestions for this feature were mixed with other sources. Consequently, we thank the Ranger for his help even though his corner has disappeared from this issue.

Free Trade Versus Protectionism: A Source Book, edited by Johannes Overbeek, Cheltenham, England and Lewiston, Vermont, Edward Elgar Ltd., 656 pages, $120.

Personalities and Products: An Historical Perspective on Advertising in America by Ed Applegate, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1998, 178 pp. Rick Owen, reviewing this book in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, considers it very elementary and superficial but useful for those with no knowledge of the history of advertising.

High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities by Irving Rein, Phillip Kotler and Martin Stoller, Lincolnwood, Chicago, Illinois, NTC Business Books, 1997, 374 pp. The authors describe the celebrity making industry's development in four stages: cottage industry to early industrialization to link industrialization to decentralized industry. JAM's reviewer liked this book very much but did not raise the question whether the three authors, all celebrities within their own profession, were or were not somewhat autobiographical.

More Than They Promised: The Studebaker Story by Thomas E. Pelsen, Stanford University Press, 2000, criticizes the firm's product policies during its latter years in good part for rejecting potential valuable additions to the line, including the refusal to take over Volkswagens' U.S. distribution before the German car became popular here, and the abandonment of the high style Avanti model just as it was gaining public favor.

Roadside America: The Automobile and the American Dream by Lucinda Lewis, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2000.

The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000 by Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks and Ben Wattenberg, Washington D.C., AEI Press (American Enterprise Institute).

Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End.

Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective.

"Lost in America," a regular travel column in Money magazine devoted its October 2000 space to Rock City Barns. Rock City, a Kentucky tourist attraction near Chattanooga, Tennessee features a mountain outlook from which one can see into seven states. But in 1937, owner Garnett Carter was troubled by Depression era business decline. He hired Clark Byers to travel to southern and Midwestern states offering to repaint farmers' barns in return for the privilege of displaying this line, the "See Rock City" slogan or some variant thereof. Byers painted about 900 such barns over three decades and about 200 are still standing. Some have become tourist attractions in their own right. David D. Jenkins' Rocky City Barns: A Passing Era (Silver Maple Press, $39.95, 800-669-3051). A restoration and preservation effort is being sponsored by Hampton Inns as part of its roadside history project.

The autumn 1999 issue of the Business History Review is devoted in good part to marketing-related articles. These include: Nancy Koehn, "Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late 19^th Century;" Donald N. Sull, "The Dynamics of Standing Still: Firestone Tire and Rubber in the Radial Revolution;" and Jeff Merron, "Putting Foreign Consumers on the Map: J. Walter Thompson's Struggle With General Motors International in the Advertising Account in the 1920's."

Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream: How One Woman Changed the Face of Modern Business, by Jane Plitt, Syracuse University Press, 1999, considers Harper "the mother of modern franchising." This item is cited in the EBHS newsletter but no indication is given of Harper's business activity or what products or franchises she handled.

Timothy R. Mahoney, Provincial Lives: Middle Class Experience in the Ante-Bellum Middle West, Cambridge U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1999 deals with, to a considerable extent, with the rivalry between St. Louis and Chicago in serving as a trade center for the Upper Midwest. Chicago, as a railroad center, had a considerable advantage over St. Louis and its steamboats. Mahoney sees gentility and a well-ordered social structure emerging in the Upper Midwest communities, particularly after the arrival of the railroad. This contradicts Turner's late 19^th century theory that the Frontier determined American character and culture.

Juliet E.K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, and Entrepreneurship, New York: Twayne Publishers (1998). This volume, highly praised by Robert C. Kenzer in the Business History Review, autumn, 1999, details the growth and development of Black-owned businesses in the United States. It traces the roots of such businesses back to pre-Colonial and Colonial commercial structures in Africa and the activities of freed slaves in the United States. The author shows the many fields in which Black business has succeeded. Credit difficulties and problems of financing receive special attention. The author constructs much of his exposition around some interesting patterns of periodization.

Merchants, Companies and Trade, edited by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999 330 pp., $69.95.

The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origin of Federal Food Policy by Clayton Coppin and Jack High, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, 219 pp., $49.50.

Monopolies in America: Empire Builders and Their Enemies from Jay Gould to Bill Gates by Charles R. Geisst, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 300 pp., $30.00.

Southern Hospitality: Tourism and the Growth of Atlanta by Harvey K. Newman, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999, 372 pp., $24.95.

The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy by Richard K. Marshall, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, 216 pp., $42.50.

Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy by Kevin H. O'Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999, 343 pp., $45.00.

The Business of Charity: The Woman's Exchange Movement, 1832-1900 by Kathleen Waters Sander, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998, 192 pp., $39.95.

The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law: The British Experience, 1760-1911 by Brad Sherman and Lionel Bently, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 242 pp., $69.95.

Free Trade, Free World: The Advent of GATT by Thomas W. Zeiler, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 267 pp., $39.95.

Selling 'em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food by David G. Hogan, New York: New York University Press, 1998, 199 pp., $24.95.

Medieval Merchants: York Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages, by Jennifer Kermode, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 381 pp., $69.95.

Trading Beyond the Mountains The British Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843 by Richard S. Mackie, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997, 420 pp., $75.00.

The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations by Karen S. Miller, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999, 261 pp., $39.95.

Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession edited by Sarah Stage and Virginia B. Vincenti, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997, 347 pp., $19.95.