Editorial

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Journal of Historical Research in Marketing

ISSN: 1755-750X

Article publication date: 26 April 2013

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Citation

Brian Jones, D.G. and Tadajewski, M. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhrm.2013.41205baa.001

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Volume 5, Issue 2

The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing draws readers and authors from a variety of related history-oriented groups including business historians, economic historians, and historically-minded scholars from various social science disciplines, as well as marketing. The marketing discipline in general, i.e. those academics who study marketing, has had a curious disinterest in history for a very long time. That condition is curious because marketing professionals make extensive use of history in marketing their products and companies (Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Macy’s, to name only a few) and other business disciplines have strong traditions of embracing historical study (e.g. management, and accounting). By comparison, marketing academics in general have little historical perspective; very few of their doctoral programs teach the history of marketing thought, and their mainstream journals largely ignore marketing history and the history of marketing thought. Of course, one exception is the CHARM Association (Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing), which is officially associated with the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. The reason we mention this right now is because as we wrote this editorial we learned that, with the CHARM 2013 submission deadline just passed, the number of paper submissions is the highest since the CHARM conference in Long Beach, California in 2005. Certainly some of these papers will make their way in revised form into JHRM. The 2013 CHARM conference will also feature its first doctoral workshop immediately preceding the conference. Our segue here is that this issue will appear in hard copy just prior to the 2013 CHARM conference. Two of the articles in this issue were presented in earlier versions at past CHARM conferences. One of those is about the Copenhagen School of Marketing; coincidentally the Copenhagen Business School is the host of CHARM 2013. Also, in this issue’s “Explorations and Insights” section, we include an autobiographical sketch of one of the founders of the CHARM conference, William Lazer.

In this issue

Articles in this issue cover a range of topics and countries including German retailing history, Danish contributions to marketing thought, the contributions (and non-contributions) of an Austrian psychologist to motivation research in America, and autobiographical reflections by distinguished marketing scholars from the UK, Canada, and America.

In “Remembering ‘Aunt Emma’: small retailing between nostalgia and a conflicted past”, Jan Logemann examines the nostalgic treatment of independent “Aunt Emma” (or “mom-and-pop”) stores in Germany during the last quarter of the twentieth century by recounting the often conflict-laden history of small retailers in urban communities such as Bremen. His research uses primary source material from retail associations, the chamber of commerce, municipal administrations, and media coverage. Logemann finds that the romanticization of the corner grocer overlooked the often-divisive role of small store-keepers in the interwar years, as well as the social considerations behind some forms of retail modernization. He urges historians of modern retailing to critically analyze the everyday roles that shops and shopkeepers have played within their communities, without at the same time embracing a market-liberal narrative of retail modernization as a function of consumer demand.

“From price theory to marketing management: Danish contributions 1930-60” is a rare account of the contributions to marketing thought by Danish and Scandinavian scholars. Erik Kloppenberg Madsen and Kurt Pedersen document the origins of a particular school of thought developed in Denmark from the 1920s through the 1960s. Their study is based on the writings of the scholars who shaped and developed the so-called Copenhagen School of marketing thought. A significant number of the source materials for this study were available in Danish only. An essential precondition for the Copenhagen School’s approach was the second wave of microeconomic theory of the 1930s. The authors argue that the Copenhagen School ultimately focused on marketing management (cf. Tadajewski, 2010), and that it offered distinctive contributions to the development of marketing theory.

The last two full articles in this issue are about motivation research and its role in developing the study of consumer behavior. One of the articles focuses on Ernest Dichter, who is positioned as a key figure in the history of marketing, legendary, notorious, and having celebrity status. The other article claims that Dichter’s role in motivation research in particular and in marketing more generally has been over-emphasized. While not really a debate, these two articles present different perspectives on the historical role of motivation research in marketing.

In “Promoting the consumer society: Ernest Dichter, the Cold War and FBI”, Mark Tadajewsk[1] focuses on the socially progressive aspect of Dichter’s writings in order to demonstrate his support for the American economic system in the Cold War climate of the 1950s through 1970s. Tadajewski uses FBI files to explore the way that Dichter came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the mid-1950s. He discovers that Dichter’s character was interpreted by respondents to FBI questioning in ways that reflected geopolitical circumstance. Some of those interviewed by the Bureau praised him highly, whilst others labeled him a Communist.

The author concludes that Dichter was a highly malleable practitioner whose practices and writings both contributed to the society in which they were disseminated, but also shifted with the circumstances in which they circulated.

In “The birth of consumer behavior: motivation research in the 1940s and 1950s”, Ronald Fullerton begins with the premise that Ernest Dichter’s importance to motivation research and consumer behavior has been over emphasized, that his claims in the name of motivation research were extravagant and even dangerous, and argues that a broader examination of sociology, anthropology, and clinical psychology is necessary to fully understand how motivation research gave birth to the study of consumer behavior. More than that, Fullerton argues that after motivation research fell out of vogue with academic journals, it continued to be used by practitioners and became the foundation of an emerging discipline of Consumer Behavior.

Explorations and insights

From its inception, the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing has welcomed biographical research and we have published several articles that are biographical in approach. In this issue we present a set of three autobiographical reflections by distinguished marketing scholars – Michael Baker, William Lazer, and Stanley Shapiro. Their careers are all hall-of-fame in stature. Their contributions span the full range of activities possible in an academic’s career from scholarship to consulting to administration. In that way there are lessons for us all in these career retrospectives. More than that, we are certain that JHRM readers will find each of these sketches simply very interesting.

Michael Baker is Emeritus Professor of Marketing at Strathclyde Business School. He is a Past President of the UK Academy of Marketing and National Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He has published over 50 books and more than 120 journal articles, and supervised 53 successful doctoral candidates some of whom have gone on to become Chaired Professors. William Lazer is Emeritus Professor at Michigan State University, a Past President of the American Marketing Association, author of over 200 books and journal articles … and one of the founding forces behind CHARM. Stanley Shapiro is Emeritus Professor of Marketing at Simon Fraser University, was the second editor of the Journal of Macromarketing, co-author of one of the most popular marketing textbooks in the world (Basic Marketing with Jerome McCarthy) and numerous journal articles, is a Past Governor and a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science, and a founding associate editor of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. Indeed, the unique concept of this Journal’s “Exploration and Insights” section was, in fact, Stan Shapiro’s idea in the first place. We take special pride in publishing these three autobiographical sketches.

D.G. Brian Jones, Mark Tadajewski

Any and all articles published in the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing and authored by any of the editorial staff go through a full double-blind review process managed by an independent editor.

References

Tadajewski, M. (2010), “Towards a history of critical marketing studies”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 26 Nos 9/10, pp. 773–824

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