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This paper aims to explore how home economists, employed by the Good Housekeeping Institute, may have influenced the use of principles from the home economics movement in advertising appeals for electric appliances.

A content analysis of more than 400 print advertisements from Good Housekeeping magazine, from 1916 to 1929, was conducted to determine whether manufacturers used appeals derived from the home economics movement in their advertising. Then, the Good Housekeeping Institute’s history is explored to suggest how its relationship with manufacturers may have resulted in the use of the home economics movement’s principles in advertising appeals for electric appliances.

The content analysis shows that principles of the home economics movement appeared in advertising appeals for electric appliances in advertisements placed in Good Housekeeping magazine during the period studied. Through its unique relationships with electric appliance manufacturers, the Good Housekeeping Institute seems to have taught manufacturers how to position electric appliances by incorporating the principles of the home economics movement in their advertising appeals.

This research demonstrates how a commercial organization successfully navigated its relationships with manufacturers and consumers for mutual benefit.

This work is the first to link the Good Housekeeping Institute’s work with manufacturers to its influence on advertising appeals. This work also expands understanding of the influence of women on marketing practice. Existing literature on women’s publications is also broadened by analyzing Good Housekeeping, rather than the more frequently studied Ladies’ Home Journal.

In the years following the publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923), Hazel Kyrk’s book became the flagship of the field that would later be known as the economics of consumption. It stimulated theoretical and empirical work on consumption. Some of the existing literature on Kyrk (e.g., Kiss & Beller, 2000; Le Tollec, 2020; Tadajewski, 2013) depicted her theory as the starting point of the economics of consumption. Nevertheless, how and why it emerged the way it did remain largely unexplored. This chapter examines Kyrk’s intellectual background, which, we argue, can be traced back to two main movements in the United States: the home economics and the institutionalist. Both movements conveyed specific endeavors as responses to the US material and social transformations that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, notably the perceived changing role of consumption and that of women in US society. On the one hand, Kyrk pursued first-generation home economists’ efforts to make sense of and put into action the shifting of women’s role from domestic producer to consumer. On the other hand, she reinterpreted Veblen’s (1899) account of consumption in order to reveal its operational value for a normative agenda focused on “wise” and “rational” consumption. This chapter studies how Kyrk carried on first-generation home economists’ progressive agenda and how she adapted Veblen’s fin-de-siècle critical account of consumption to the context of the household goods developed in 1900–1920. Our account of Kyrk’s intellectual roots offers a novel narrative to better understand the role of gender and epistemological questions in her theory.

Hazel Kyrk, one of the first women economists at the Economic Department of the University of Chicago and author of A Theory of Consumption (1923), conducted groundbreaking research for the Bureau of Home Economics of the US Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kyrk made a considerable contribution to the development of standards for a “decent living,” the Consumer Price Index, and the conceptualization of what would later turn into the definition of the poverty line. This chapter evaluates Kyrk’s use of eugenic notions of gender and race that were widely used in Kyrk’s day. This chapter shows that eugenic reasoning impacts Kyrk’s theoretical work only superficially but does structure her research on consumption standards through her focus on the white middle-class family as the unit of analysis for consumer behavior. This chapter also makes clear that the American Institutionalist approach to consumer behavior, rather than marginalized and side-tracked due to a lack of theoretical progress, was relegated to the margins of economics science together with the research of women economists into Home Economics departments and policy research at government institutions.

This chapter discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923), the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. This chapter explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. This chapter delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. This chapter brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.

Hazel Kyrk’s recognised contributions include a shift in analytic focus from production to consumption, pioneering work to measure household production as part of family income, empirical studies of family behaviour, and contributions to policy. But her account of ‘wise’ consumption and its intersection with ‘high’ living standards is not well understood. The three aims of this chapter are to explain ‘wise’ consumption across Kyrk’s three major books, to consider its role in Kyrk’s empirical studies, and to explain why it fell into oblivion. Tackling what Wesley Mitchell described as the ‘most baffling of difficulties’, Kyrk explained what constitutes a family’s ‘good’ in a manner that was critical of mere emulation. Her 1923 book required that wise consumption include new and personal elements. Her 1929/1933 book detailed five qualitative criteria (balance between interests, full and varied experiences, originality, rational sources of satisfaction, and the use of scientific information). But her 1953 book weakened this normative language, reflecting Margaret Reid’s view that Kyrk’s account was too demanding. Although Kyrk felt wise consumption avoided paternalism, her peers disagreed (Hoyt, 1938/1945; Reid, 1938/1945). We close with some problems with Kyrk’s account and a brief consideration of its continuing relevance.

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.

The aim of this paper is to seek to reveal the familial roots of modern management thought, largely overlooked by a vast majority of management historians.

Using a hermeneutic approach, the early uses of the word “management” are analyzed, as well as the different literature where it is the most frequently employed.

“Management” does not mean primarily “business management.” Rather, the first meanings of this word refer to the family realm. As such, the development of early management thought is not a matter of technical or scientific innovation, nor is it a matter of institutional size or profit. For a long time, management practices have concerned things more than people. In the twentieth century, the principle of control comes to supersede the principles of care and self‐government.

The paper's findings call for another history of management thought, as against the too narrow histories of modern business management and the too inclusive histories of management as an ancestral and universal practice.

This research sheds light on two forgotten roots of management thought: the principles of care and of self‐government, which management practitioners could bring up‐to‐date. By presenting the family as the first locus of true “management” thought, it is an invitation to draw from domestic ways of governing.

The historical material here analyzed remains largely unknown to management historians. The method, focusing on text analysis rather than on the study of practices, remains rare in the field of management history.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit Russell Belk’s (1988) landmark paper “Possessions and the extended self”. The authors provide a prehistory of related ideas and then examine the controversy it triggered regarding the different paradigms of research in marketing (Cohen, 1989) some 26 years ago.

This paper takes Belk seriously when he argues that his work is a synthesis and extension of prior studies leading to the novel production of the “extended self” concept. Via a close reading of the history of self-constitution, the authors highlight a number of thinkers who were grappling with similar issues now associated in our disciplinary consciousness to the idea of the “extended self”. To assess the contribution of Belk’s work, the authors engage in citation and interpretive analyses. The first analysis compared scholarly citations of Belk (1988) with the top ten most-cited Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) papers published in the same year. The second citation analysis compared Belk (1988) to the top ten most-cited JCR papers in the history of the journal. The authors follow this with an interpretive analysis of Belk’s contribution to consumer research via his 1988 paper.

Belk (1988) had the most citations (N = 934) of any paper published in JCR in 1988. When compared to all papers published in the history of JCR, Belk (1988) leads with the most overall citations. Moreover, Belk (1988) is the most prominent interpretive paper that appeared in JCR and one of the top three, regardless of paradigm. The analysis illustrates diversity in topic and methodology, thus indicating that Belk’s contribution impacted a wide variety of scholars. Interpretive analysis indicates the importance of Belk’s work for subsequently impactful consumer researchers.

The authors offer a prehistory of the “extended self” concept by highlighting literature that many consumer researchers will not have explored previously. With citations spanning over three decades, consumer behavior scholars recognize Belk (1988) as an important paper. Our analysis reveals that contrary to received wisdom, it is not only important for interpretive researchers or scholars within the consumer culture theory, but it is significant for the entire discipline, irrespective of paradigmatic orientation. The research presented here demonstrates that Belk’s (1988) paper is arguably one of the most influential papers ever published in JCR.

In the annals of marketing history and the history of marketing thought, there is a key figure whose influence from the mid‐twentieth century through to the present day is worthy of note, Dr Ernest Dichter. The purpose of this paper is to place Dichter's writings in appropriate context and posit that arguably more insight into this charismatic figure can be discerned by taking greater account of the Cold War (1946‐1991) climate in which he was working and writing.

This paper is best thought of as an example of biographically inflected research. The paper focuses on the “socially progressive” aspect of his writings in order to display Dichter's support for the American economic system in the Cold War climate of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The author highlights how Dichter came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the mid‐1950s. What this paper underscores above and beyond all those that have explored aspects of Dichter's life is that his 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 labelled him a Communist, and accused his organisation of employing people with similar leanings. While Dichter may have had some limited associations with socialist doctrines in his early youth, such accusations were misplaced. But, overall, what this paper highlights is 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.

This paper adds an important dimension to the biography of Ernest Dichter which has not previously been explored.