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When the owl of Minerva flew at dusk: marketing in Greater Germany, 1918‐1939

Ronald A. Fullerton (American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt)

European Business Review

ISSN: 0955-534X

Article publication date: 16 January 2009

343

Abstract

Purpose

During the 1920s and into the 1930s, German‐language work on consumer behavior led the world; for example, segmentation was clearly discussed from the late 1920s. The purpose of this paper is to show how marketing thought in Germany and Austria reached a peak even as the environmental substructure that sustained it was being seriously eroded by political and economic changes that forever consigned it to a peripheral position upon the world stage.

Design/methodology/approach

The design of the study is a critical historical one relying heavily upon documents produced during the period discussed. Statements are weighed and evaluated.

Findings

The paper finds that very impressive, at times world‐leading, work was being done in the 1920s and early 1930s, particularly in the areas of segmentation and what would later become known as consumer behavior. Much of what later became known as Motivation Research, or example, was pioneered in Germany and Austria before 1934.

Research limitations/ implications

The primary implication is that a great deal of marketing thought developed outside the USA, sometimes drawing upon US marketing thought, in other cases developing completely independently. A second implication is that marketing thought can be weakened by political and economic conditions, as Germany and Austria painfully experienced.

Originality/value

This is the first study to explore historical German and Austrian marketing thought in a cross‐cultural manner, comparing and contrasting them with thought developed elsewhere.

Keywords

Citation

Fullerton, R.A. (2009), "When the owl of Minerva flew at dusk: marketing in Greater Germany, 1918‐1939", European Business Review, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 92-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/09555340910925201

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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