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This editorial aims to review the contents of the special issue, situating it within appropriate historical context.

A close reading of the contents of the special issue is provided.

This special issue reveals the important contributions of a number of previously forgotten female pioneers in marketing, advertising and consumer research.

This introduction adds further historical detail about the structures and biases that have limited the opportunities available to female contributors to marketing theory, thought and practice.

Women and marketing have had a complicated relationship for a considerable time. They have often been involved with marketing‐type practices for longer than we have appreciated to date. Against considerable odds, some have carved out careers in academia and practice that have to be admired. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work of two pioneer contributors to marketing.

This paper engages in a close reading of the work of two female contributors. Their writing is placed in historical context which helps reveal the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

Female teachers, lecturers and practitioners had an important role to play in theorising consumer practice and helping people to successfully negotiate a complex marketplace replete with new challenges, difficulties and sometimes mendacious marketers seeking to profit from the limited knowledge consumers possessed.

This paper explores the writings of a practitioner and scholar respectively whose work has merited only limited attention previously. More than this, it links the arguments that are made to the papers that appear in the rest of the special issue.

In a very personal reflection, this paper aims to trace the academic trajectory of a female marketing academic in a very male-dominated discipline. It also highlights the struggle balancing work and family, as well as protecting an immigrant identity in a foreign culture.

Given the period and unique conditions of the author’s academic journey, this highly personal retrospective account is based on recall of significant events that have shaped my singular experience. It attempts to capture the experience of an immigrant female novice navigating not only a foreign culture but also a very male-dominant discipline.

While times have changed and gender barriers are lower today, challenges remain. In addition, the set of choices faced by women with partners in the same discipline differ significantly and complicate the family-work balance decisions. There is no one set of path that can be followed.

While there is a professional cost to deviating from the mainstream, pursuing alternatives to the dominant topics is vital to advancing the health and relevance of the marketing discipline. The relationships between marketing and development have been an important topic for me; however, these macromarketing topics continue to be neglected. Given the current socio-economic-political conditions globally, perhaps future marketing scholars will devote greater attention to these topics.

This is purely the author’s personal reflection of a journey that began accidentally. It also occurred in the 1970s when women were rare in the business world, particularly business academia. It offers a retrospective comparison to male peers who, aside from their individual talents and history (Belk, 2017; Firat, 2014; Holbrook, 2017), were achieving their professional goals at a similar period. It also provides some historical context that can be compared to experiences of other female pioneers in marketing academia and marketing practice (Bolton, 2017; Tadajewski and Maclaran, 2013; Zeithaml, 2017).

This paper calls attention to the importance of historical research within “critical marketing studies”. It seeks to articulate a historical perspective based on the work of Michel Foucault.

This paper is based on a close reading of relevant Foucaultian primary and secondary texts.

Foucault's scholarship provides a useful counterpoint to the calls for critical theory to form the central paradigm in critical marketing studies, revealing a complex constellation of power/knowledge relations underpinning marketing theory, thought and pedagogy.

This is a close reading and examination of a theoretically sophisticated, rigorous scholar who remains largely underexplored in relation to marketing theory and the history of marketing thought.

This paper aims to examine how women working in the advertising industry during the 1920s and 1930s encouraged and resisted stereotypes about women to establish a professional identity. This seemingly paradoxical approach provided women with opportunities for professional development and network building. Dorothy Dignam is presented as a case study of one such advertising woman. She was a market researcher, a teacher, an advocate for women’s employment in advertising, a historian of women’s advertising clubs and a supporter of and a contributor to women’s professional networking.

Archival material is drawn from the N. W. Ayer and Son archives at the Smithsonian Institute, the Advertising Women of New York archives and the Dorothy Dignam Papers at the Schlesinger Library, the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women papers at Bryn Mawr, the Dignam Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Women’s Advertising Club of Chicago (WACC) archives at the University of Illinois, Chicago. A close reading method of analysis places the material in a historical context. Additionally, it provides a narrative structure to demonstrate the complementary relationship between advertising club work and professional identity.

Dignam’s career strategies helped her to construct a professional identity that situated her as a guide, teacher and role model for other women who worked in advertising. She supported and created an attitude that enabled aspiring career women to embark on their careers, and she assisted in creating a coalition of women who empowered each other through their advertising club work.

Dignam’s published work about careers for women in advertising, her own career and its advancement and her involvement with women’s advertising clubs all served a rhetorical purpose. Her professional life sought to change both men’s and women’s attitudes about the impact of women in professional roles. In turn, the influence of attitudes helped to create space for women in business, especially those seeking advertising careers.

This paper illustrates how Dignam’s career, accomplishments and publications coalesce to provide evidence of how women negotiated professional identities and claimed space for themselves in the business world and in the advertising industry.

This paper aims to introduce a special issue of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing which includes autobiographical sketches by leading scholars in the history of marketing and consumer research.

A brief review of the (auto)biographical tradition in marketing scholarship leads to a commentary on the four accounts in this issue.

Highlights of the four portraits are presented and insights into their authors’ lives and careers are offered.

The authors hope this introductory article whets readers’ appetites to learn more about the four contributors whose careers and personal lives are explicated for their consumption.

My goal is to describe my life in marketing over more than 36 years and to help readers better understand (from my personal perspective) the history of marketing. I also aim to lift the curtain on some aspects of service within the marketing community.

This paper is an autobiographical sketch. It describes some key moments in my career, as well as describing how my most cited articles came to be written. It emphasizes the contextual factors at work in different periods, so readers can better understand how and why my research evolved in certain ways. I aim to convey the nature and variety of career experiences that were (and are) open to marketing academics. I discuss my experiences at the Journal of Marketing and the Marketing Science Institute.

Marketing changed rapidly between 1974 and 2017. Although change can be uncomfortable, I urge marketers to seek exposure to new ideas and practices; they are essential to learning and growth. Unexpected opportunities will come along and an alert individual can learn much from them. My time in industry was a learning experience for me. There are many kinds of interesting and successful careers.

The marketing field advances, not by the work of a single individual, but from the accumulated work of the entire marketing community. Everyone has a role to play. I encourage each individual to look for ways to contribute. I offer thoughts on how to build a research career based on my own experience.

My thoughts may shed some light on the experiences of a woman academic and the globalization of marketing academia between 1974 and 2017.

My hope is that this paper contributes to a better understanding of the history of marketing, when it is considered together with other articles on this topic. It may also be useful to people who are embarking upon a career, as well as those seeking to understand the work of earlier marketing scholars.