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The purpose of this paper is to reveal the contributions of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (JHRM) to the academic body of knowledge. Pursuant to this objective, the study classifies the publications and citation structure of the JHRM, the nature of the publications’ authorship, the most cited articles and authors and the themes that have been covered from the first day until now (2009–2021).

This paper uses bibliometric methodologies to analyze several aspects of the JHRM.

The average number of citations per paper is 4.54. The number of articles studying marketing history/practice (163) and the history of thought (158) is almost equal, consistent with the journal’s primary orientation. Compared with other journals, it could be said that JHRM achieved close ranks, especially with those of other historical journals of similar age. The most prolific authors whose articles have been published in the JHRM are used in universities located in the USA. The JHRM is closely connected to top-tier journals in the field.

This study is limited to one journal (JHRM) only. However, the authors assert that the articles analyzed are representative samples of the entire school of marketing history. Another important consideration is that the value of many critical studies in the social sciences cannot be determined using only bibliometric measurements.

This paper contributes to the marketing literature from several perspectives. First, evaluating the JHRM in terms of its unique standing shows the scope of the field of marketing history. Second, it serves as a guide for existing and future authors regarding the JHRM and the history of marketing. Third, the JHRM’s contributions provide insights into emerging trends and new opportunities for the entire marketing community.

This paper aims to analyze the problematic relationship between the Left, the commercial revolution and the progressive growth of mass consumption during the Italian economic miracle.

Taking for example the city of Bologna, the most important city run by the Italian communist party, the paper problematizes the socio-economic and political – institutional processes connected with the emergence of “American-like” commercial and distribution strategies, and of consumerist identities.

Bologna’s administrators governed the commerce through a rationalization supported by urban planning, including the establishment of a chain of “associated supermarkets”, built on municipal areas and financed by a mixed-capital company set up for that purpose. At the same time, they sought to protect small retailers to gain their political consensus and to contain crisis-related anxieties among the consumers, a category which has still an uncertain identity in Italy.

Much remains to be seen in the characteristics of the Italian miracle, and in the manner it was ruled. The case of Bologna illuminates an important piece of the Italian Left’s attempt to interpret and to lead the modernization of the country.

The purpose of this paper is to show how state socialist countries used soft power to improve their image in the West and advocate “the socialist way of life” in the context of the Cold War.

The author argues from a cultural history perspective that underlines transfers and entanglements among the two camps during the Cold War. The study is based on primary and secondary sources such as automotive periodicals and archival material from the German Bundesarchiv.

International fairs turned in the late 1950s into a new “battlefield” of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and its allies were celebrating at these meetings, important medial victories, laying the grounds for a state socialist consumer society. For the first time, Western audiences were realizing that irrespective of certain stylistic differences, consumer goods and particularly cars were not that different on the other side of the Iron Curtain. However, ideological bias and manufacturing flaws prevented them from being fully acknowledged by the Western side.

Cold War research mainly focused on bipolar confrontation and the high-level decision-making process. This study is part of a recent trend in historiography to reassess the history of the Cold War, focusing on the multi-layered interactions between the two camps. It also shows that consumption and material well-being were important topics for understanding the dynamics and the flow of ideas through the Iron Curtain.

This paper aims to present a visually documented brand history of Winchester Repeating Arms through a cultural analysis of iconic Western images featuring its lever action rifles.

The study applies visual culture perspectives and methods to the research and writing of brand history. Iconic Western images featuring Winchester rifles have been selected, examined, and used as points of departure for gathering and interpreting additional data about the brand. The primary sources consist chiefly of photographs from the nineteenth century and films and television shows from the twentieth century. Most visual source materials were obtained from the US Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and the Internet Movie Firearms Database. These have been augmented by written sources.

Within a few years of the launch of the Winchester brand in 1866, visual images outside company control associated its repeating rifles with the settlement of the American West and with the colorful people involved. Some of these images were reproduced in books and others sold to consumers in the form of cartes de visite, cabinet cards and stereographs made from albumen prints. Starting in the 1880s, the live Wild West shows of William F. Cody and his stars entertained audiences with a heroic narrative of the period that included numerous Winchesters. During the twentieth century and into the present, Winchesters have been featured in motion pictures and television series with Western themes.

Historical research is an ongoing process. The discovery of new primary data, both written and visual, may lead to a revised interpretation of the selected images.

Based largely on images as primary data sources, this study approaches brand history from the perspective of visual culture theory and data. The research shows how brands acquire meaning not just from the companies that own them but also from consumers, the media and other producers of popular culture.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to analyze the origins of Adelco in the context of the “Consumer Orientation Campaign” (Orientación Para El Consumidor, OPEC, in Spanish) promoted by the Ministry of Economy between 1978 and 1981; second, to describe the main characteristics of Adelco during its first years, especially its activities, structure and its international connections; finally, to contribute to the study of consumer organizations in Argentina and Latin America, where very little research has been done on the subject.

This article is organized into three sections. First, it outlines the deep transformations taking place in the Argentine economy during the military regime, highlighting particularly the variations in inflation rates and a series of inflation-related policies. It goes on to offer a brief overview of some new studies in consumer history in Argentina as well as an analysis of the Consumer Orientation campaign, promoted by Martínez de Hoz, the Minister of Economy from 1978 to 1981. Finally, it details the origins and key features of Adelco. For source material, this paper uses a qualitative approach, working with government documents, interviews and magazines. It also makes use of the Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting of Adelco. At the same time, this paper contributes to current debates in the history of consumption.

This paper reaches two main conclusions. First, while Adelco may have presented itself as a non-government organization (NGO) linked to consumer interests and responsive to grass-roots pressures, it maintained a top-down structure with close ties to state policy. Second, Adelco was part of what Matthew Hilton has analyzed as a shift in the consumer movement of the last several decades: a change from collective action to individual choice.

The main value of the paper rests on three factors. First, it offers an insight into the origins of Adelco, the first consumer defense NGO in Argentina. Second, it studies sources that have never previously been analyzed, such as the Minutes of the Board of Directors meeting and personal interviews. Third, it shows the ties between the origins of Adelco and the consumer policy of the military government in Argentina.

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of children in an emergent Irish consumer culture and advertising from 1848-1921. In particular, the significance of children's gender and reading materials in the process of consumption will be evaluated.

An analysis of primary sources, literature and secondary sources substantiates this research.

By evaluating advertisements, magazines, school textbooks and children's literature from the 1848-1921 period, this article argues that Irish children were encouraged to engage with an emergent consumer culture through reading. This article also evaluates the importance of gender in considering children as consumers and it focuses upon a number of critically neglected Victorian, Irish, female authors who discussed the interface between advertising, consumption and the Irish child.

This article is an original contribution to new areas of research about Irish consumerism and advertising history. Substantial archival research has been carried out which appraises the historical significance of advertisements, ephemera and critically neglected children's fiction.

This paper aims to investigate the introduction of Nescafé, a brand of the Swiss multinational company Nestlé, into the Turkish market and examines the formative period (1952-1987) before it succeeded to become the most popular and leading coffee brand in Turkey. By that it aims to draw attention to Turkey as an interesting case in point for the study of the history of marketing practices in a non-Western context.

This study deploys a variety of largely unexplored material ranging from archival sources to newspaper reports and advertisements. In the first part, archival sources provided by the Nestlé archives (AHN) will be analyzed to present the company’s marketing strategy. As the amount on advertisements between 1952 and 1984 remained modest, the second part is devoted to the analysis of Turkish media reports to discuss Nescafé’s public perception.

The paper demonstrates that during the period under consideration the instable political and economic environment was pivotal for Nescafé’s marketing. Nestlé in the early years used similar strategies as in the West advertising Nescafé as a premium product for the upper middle-class. Due to import restrictions, it was a scarce and high-priced product. Nescafé succeeded to become a highly esteemed and sought-after product because it stood for Western modernity and prosperity. The study argues that it was not primarily Nestlé’s marketing that resulted in Nescafé’s considerable brand recognition but its public “visibility” through media reporting.

This study is a preliminary attempt to investigate the history of instant coffee and its marketing in a non-Western market. The paper is mainly focused on Nescafé because it was and still is the most important brand in Turkey. Further, this paper brings into spotlight a country with distinct sociopolitical and cultural particularities which distinguish it from Western countries and allow to scrutinize how marketing practice and thought may develop in a non-Western setting. Further research is needed as Turkey's specific marketing environment is far from being thoroughly investigated.

By focusing on Turkey, this paper provides an insight into the specific ways Nescafé was marketed, consumed and perceived in a non-Western market. By that it allows to consider how multinational companies responded and adapted to a culturally, politically and economically challenging environment.

This paper aims to understand how social, cultural and political economic dynamics inform packaging design. Specifically, it focuses on one of the oldest Turkish pasta brands, Piyale, and seeks to understand the impact of the changes in the macro-institutional structures on its packaging practices over the course of almost a century.

The analysis is mainly based on data collected through archival and documentary research. The archival data are gathered from various sources including the personal archives of the former managers, advertisements published in the popular magazines of the time and industry reports and documents. Data are analyzed using a combination of compositional and social semiotic analysis.

The analysis indicates four distinct periods in the brand’s history. The design elements and visual identity reflect the social, cultural, political, economic and technological changes shaping the Turkish society in these different time periods. The findings show that a socio-historically situated analysis of a brand’s packaging design transformation reveals the complex relationship between design and culture and provides clues to the market-society interface.

This study provides a comprehensive historical analysis of the visual identity evolution of the oldest Turkish pasta brand Piyale and contributes to research on packaging histories in the non-Western markets.

This paper aims to explore the parameters of Bulgarian cigarette advertising in the Cold War period. It contrasts the evolution of cigarette marketing in Bulgaria and the USA in the context of contrasting communist and capitalist notions of the “good life” versus the “common good”.

The paper is informed by a growing literature on advertising under communism, but also new work on consumption in the Soviet Union and Cold War Eastern Europe. It draws upon archival and printed Bulgarian, and some American, sources, and the memoir of a key player in the Bulgarian tobacco industry.

The paper concludes that marketing of cigarettes in communist Bulgaria gained momentum in the same period that cigarette advertising in the USA was severely curtailed. In Bulgaria, the notion that cigarettes were key to the promised “good life” and “building socialism”, out-weighed any notion of harm to the “common good”.

This study casts doubt on the common notion that there was no advertising under communism, by offering an in-depth study of an industry that was allowed to market and develop a quality product to an unusual degree. It undermines assumptions about “command” economy, industry behavior, contributing to a re-thinking of Eastern Bloc consumer culture. In addition, it sheds light on changes in the acceptability of cigarette advertising within the Cold War context, namely, how the process of advertising regulation in the West, and increased marketing in the East, fit into Cold War debates and interactions.

The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of newspaper advertisements for goods in Stockholm newspapers in the 18th century by studying what goods were advertised, how frequently they were advertised and what marketing strategies were used. The findings are discussed in relation to results from other countries and the institutional context.

The primary sources used are three Swedish papers published in Stockholm, one national, Inrikes tidningar, and two local. Stockholms Weckobladh and Dagligt Allehanda. In all, more than 1300 advertisements were examined. In addition, a number of secondary sources were used.

In contrast to most other countries, the guilds held a firm grip on Sweden’s (and Stockholm’s) business life throughout the 18th century, and enforced strict restrictions on market entry. Thereby, competition was reduced, the number of tradesmen was more or less constant and the need for marketing was low. The guilds also restricted advertising. This led to marketing strategies being underdeveloped in comparison to other countries, which affected Swedish marketing and Swedish advertisements all through the 19th century. Marketing was a viable option in 18th century Sweden, but only for those not restricted by guilds and societies.

There has been very little research on 18th century Swedish marketing. The paper also illustrates the need for including the institutional context when discussing historical marketing, which often has been neglected for this period in the international literature.