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1 – 10 of 276This paper aims to examine the entrepreneurial Fred Harvey Company's early public relations and publicity efforts to determine what they add to our knowledge of the development of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the entrepreneurial Fred Harvey Company's early public relations and publicity efforts to determine what they add to our knowledge of the development of public relations in the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
This historical analysis uses mainly data gleaned from an in‐depth examination of the two archival sources available: the Fred Harvey Company photographs and papers at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ (at about ten linear feet, the most complete collection of Harvey materials), and the Fred Harvey Collection at the University of Arizona (photographs, correspondence, and miscellaneous records).
Findings
Although the dominant historical perspective has labeled this era the “Seedbed Years” and characterized them as “a day of business arrogance toward employee and citizen alike”, this case suggests that other models of practice were in use that developed out of differing cultural milieux. To the dominant view of public relations developing in the USA as a result of business pressures, then, should be added the perspective of organizational culture and the role it played in the development and professionalism of the field.
Research limitations/implications
This one case study cannot be generalized to the whole field; however, the findings support those of a growing number of other scholars (Sullivan, Piasecki), suggesting that the dominant evolutionary paradigm of US public relations history artificially constricts our understanding of the field.
Practical implications
The insider's perspective gained through this study has implications for professionalism, integrated communications, and ethical practice.
Originality/value
This paper examines a previously unknown case in US public relations history and sheds light on early public relations and publicity methods that challenge the dominant paradigm in US scholarship. The notion of press agentry as the dominant practice is explored and challenged.
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Robert C. Ford and David D. Van Fleet
The purpose of this paper is to examine the management innovations developed and implemented by the Harvey House restaurants with specific attention to those human resource…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the management innovations developed and implemented by the Harvey House restaurants with specific attention to those human resource policies and procedures that were created to use what many believe to be the first large-scale use of single women working away from home, the famous Harvey Girls. A second purpose of this paper is to use bricolage theory to frame the innovations that Harvey pioneered to illustrate how the theory pertains to this entrepreneur who civilized dining in the “Wild West.”
Design/methodology/approach
This paper relies on secondary and archival sources to inform its points and rationale.
Findings
Fred Harvey applied his experience-gained knowledge to invent a system that would provide meals to railroad travelers along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad that were not only consistently excellent and reasonably priced but also could be served within the tight time limits of train stops for fuel and water. The precision of his service standards was innovative and required trained and disciplined servers. To deliver the quality of service for which his company became known across the “Wild West.” Harvey invented his famous Harvey Girls.
Originality/value
Fred Harvey’s invention of the Harvey Girls represents the first large-scale employment of women and required the invention of human resource management policies, procedures and processes. This is the story of how this management innovator successfully applied entrepreneurial bricolage to bring civilized dining to the “Wild West.”
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This research aims to explore the origin of tourism public relations (PR) in Thailand as practiced by the State Railway of Siam (SRS) prior to the Second World War when rail…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to explore the origin of tourism public relations (PR) in Thailand as practiced by the State Railway of Siam (SRS) prior to the Second World War when rail travel was still a new form of transportation in the country.
Design/methodology/approach
The study approach is documentary research involving an in-depth examination of both published and unpublished documents of a special collection of the SRS archives conducted in a fact-based and descriptive manner.
Findings
In the first half of the 20th century, a period of global economic uncertainty, the SRS performed the role of the government's PR division, with one of its important tasks being to promote travel and tourism in the country among both Thais and foreigners. The SRS incorporated the use of PR materials including advertisements, films, guidebooks, speeches, events, pre-arranged press activities and sales promotions in its activities. The current study explores the SRS's strategies employed in the creation of integrated and place communication campaigns to promote its train service and tourism throughout Thailand via its railway network.
Research limitations/implications
The findings of the study reveal the PR efforts carried out by the SRS, which utilized a variety of communication tools in tourism promotion. This can lead to a better understanding of global tourism PR history and more specifically the development of tourism PR in Thailand and throughout South-East Asia.
Practical implications
The results add to the body of knowledge of how integrated marketing communication, place branding and professional PR activities evolved in Thailand.
Originality/value
The research fills a gap in the history of tourism PR and its relation to broader social and economic structures in Siam prior to the 21st century. It also reveals the little explored topic of how the railway engaged in historical path of PR practices and how they relate to a country's specific PR development outside of the highly researched U.S. context.
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This paper aims to examine the tourist business and marketing strategies of a US agribusiness giant, the United Fruit Company (UFCO), between its incorporation in 1899 and 1940…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the tourist business and marketing strategies of a US agribusiness giant, the United Fruit Company (UFCO), between its incorporation in 1899 and 1940. It considers how tourist marketing served the company’s public-relations interest and tourism’s broader connection to narratives of US ascendancy in the Caribbean Basin.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on original research in a series of published company materials, including annual reports and a wide variety of marketing materials, as well as a variety of rare primary sources documenting the experiences of US tourists on UFCO cruises.
Findings
From its incorporation in 1899, the UFCO developed a Caribbean cruise business as a vital part of its strategies of vertical integration and expansion around the region. Marketing tropical travel at a time when tropical disease dominated US perceptions of such places required a thorough conceptual makeover, and UFCO publicity played an important part in this process. The company advertised Caribbean destinations first for their therapeutic possibilities, but by the 1920s, a framework of anachronistic space and picturesque primitivism predominated in marketing campaigns. The structure of this narrative naturalized the company’s, and more broadly, US, hegemony in the region. While on cruises, tourists became witnesses to and participants in a series of spectacles and activities highlighting the company’s technological prowess and benevolence.
Originality/value
This analysis centers on a largely overlooked dimension of the famed banana company’s enterprise. It is grounded in a wide collection of primary sources largely untapped by researchers, a source base that brings tourist perception and experience into the story of this company’s marketing efforts. This research brings tourism and leisure into the historical discussion of US power in early-twentieth-century Latin America.
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Technology is a combination of tools and crafts, a balance of hardware and software. Hospitality technology has advanced through innovation in the application of both machines and…
Abstract
Purpose
Technology is a combination of tools and crafts, a balance of hardware and software. Hospitality technology has advanced through innovation in the application of both machines and tools, and systems and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to offer perspective on past technological advancements and some predictions for those just on the horizon in the hospitality field.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews the definition of technology and the changes that have occurred in the hospitality industry in relation to the technology used. It then goes on to make some forecasts about the use of technology for the future through past studies and an insight into the technology of today.
Findings
Technology is heading in a direction that will produce more dramatic change than at any time over the past 100 years. Expected changes are to turn the hospitality industry from the age of labor to the age of wireless – as equipment becomes more efficient, less labor will be required. As the consumers and employees become more wireless in their orientation, restaurants, and hotels must be accommodating to these changes.
Practical implications
Restaurants and hotels are adapting to technology at a slower pace than other organizations and that could mean problems as the technology continues to change at an extremely rapid rate over the next decade. The changes that are occurring will help with human resource practices in screening applications, bringing more knowledge of the brand to consumers and employees, processing of orders in a more efficient way, and eliminating some of the inefficiencies of old.
Originality/value
The paper takes a look at the past and projects the current scenario related to technology and hospitality into the future. Human resource practices will change as the technology for training and recruiting gets more cost‐effective, and guest services will improve as marketing can be done to the guests where they live – online and wireless.
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Postcards have been sold by the billions over the past 100 years or so, but you never would recognize their popularity by checking library holdings. Most libraries ignore them…
Abstract
Postcards have been sold by the billions over the past 100 years or so, but you never would recognize their popularity by checking library holdings. Most libraries ignore them, yet a reporter observed at the 1981 national poster and postcard show: “Postcard collection—a nostalgic pastime that has become a consuming passion for thousands of Americans—is more popular today than when picture postcards first caught on at the turn of the century.” Among the dealers of new cards, Kennard Harris says that “in the past five years there has been an explosion of museum postcard publishing and sales in this country.”
– The purpose of this paper is to argue that for many urban dwellers in developed societies proximity of the arts in the urban space is not tantamount to their availability.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to argue that for many urban dwellers in developed societies proximity of the arts in the urban space is not tantamount to their availability.
Design/methodology/approach
The method applied is based upon the conception of capabilities and the concept of the Human Development Index; an analysis of the available cultural statistics, as well as a study of two revealing case studies, that of Bilbao, Spain and Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, as distinct and alternative examples of the employment of arts as a stimulus for the urban growth and regeneration.
Findings
The findings suggest that the current urban policies are not conducive to an equal access to the arts of the urban dwellers.
Originality/value
The author provides an innovative explanation of this phenomenon from his own perspective of the political aesthetics, which includes, inter alia, the concepts of the public agoraphobia, commodification and interpassivity. Making use of the distinction between the intrinsic and instrumental values, the author argues in favour of the participative approach to the arts in the urban social life, and formulates a policy recommendation according to which small- and medium-sized cities are possibly better suited to satisfy the need for the enjoyment of the arts in a more egalitarian way.
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This paper builds a system‐dynamics model of the Mexican economy and tests several propositions regarding policy and income inequality. It concludes, among other things, that one…
Abstract
This paper builds a system‐dynamics model of the Mexican economy and tests several propositions regarding policy and income inequality. It concludes, among other things, that one of the most significant developments over the past twenty years has been the declining wage paid to those in the manufacturing export sector. As a consequence, policies aimed at increasing developing states participation in the internationalization of production have been less helpful than supposed.
Jessica Strübel and Monica Sklar
In 1930s Britain, tennis champion Fred Perry was a household name. However, the name Fred Perry is more commonly associated with striped-collar polo shirts featuring a laurel…
Abstract
In 1930s Britain, tennis champion Fred Perry was a household name. However, the name Fred Perry is more commonly associated with striped-collar polo shirts featuring a laurel wreath logo. In the late 1960s, Fred Perry polo shirts were standard mod and Skinhead dress. When worn by working-class youth the shirt became subversive commentary on English elitism because it had originally been designed for the tennis courts. Many punks also aligned with the brand in dual demonstration of association with working-class ethics as well as an alternative to t-shirts. In the 1980s and onward, this sartorial style was appropriated by right-wing white nationalists, which stripped it of its subcultural spirit. Patriot groups, such as neo-Nazis and the alt-right have continued to co-opt the subcultural style, simultaneously turning the Fred Perry polo into a symbol of racism and bigotry. The multi-use of the Fred Perry brand creates a challenge in how to interpret visual cues when one garment has competing perceptions that at times can be completely opposing. This study examines the history of the Fred Perry brand through the lens of symbolic interactionism, specifically how the shirt evolved from a rather innocuous, yet subversive, form of merchandize repurposed from the tennis world to youth subcultures where the polo communicated group identity. As the brand has moved through fashion cycles, the association of the Fred Perry polo with deviant groups has reduced the brand to representations of hate and separation, which has impacted sales and brand image with its intended consumers.
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