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The purpose of this paper is to show that forgotten classics, such as Melvin T. Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising, can still teach lessons to students of the history of marketing thought.

The method involved using various key words on several internet search engines. The extensive internet search produced more than a dozen contemporaneous reviews and commentaries. Additionally, there was an intensive search through the histories of marketing thought literature. The extensive and intensive searches allowed a meta-analysis reexamining Copeland’s principles in light of future historical developments from the mid-1920s to the 21st century.

Historically, Copeland’s principles established the commodity school of marketing thought. (One of the three traditional approaches to understanding marketing taught to generations of students from the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s.) Although the traditional approaches/schools have long gone out of favor, Copeland’s classification of consumer and industrial (business) goods (products and services) have stood the test of time and are still in use 100 years later. Long overlooked, Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising also anticipated the marketing management/strategy as well as the consumer/buyer behavior schools of marketing thought, dominant in the discipline since the 1960s, for which he has seldom – if ever – been acknowledged.

Historical research is limited because some relevant source material may no longer exist or may have been overlooked.

There have been no reviews of Copeland’s principles in almost a century, and no published meta-analysis of this forgotten classic exists. New discoveries reveal the value in studying marketing history and the history of marketing thought. For marketing as a social science to progress, it is invaluable to understand how ideas originated, were improved and integrated into larger conceptualizations, classification schema and theories over time.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the development of the 4Ps idea from the 1910s to the 1940s in the USA and explore its historical background.

The historical consideration of the precedents for the 4Ps idea is not only focused just on the idea, but also on the historical context in which it was produced. The analysis will include a re‐examination of the traditional “functional approach” to marketing thought, leading to different interpretations from previous research.

The 4Ps idea did not suddenly appear in the 1950s, but had precedents that could be traced back to the 1910s. Based on the separation of planning from implementation and ideas on management process, the precedents for the 4Ps appeared as various discussions on components of the planning function in sales management, sales/marketing policies and marketing management.

The research implies the historical study could enrich our knowledge. This investigation is limited to the USA: other studies could investigate the history of marketing and marketing thought in other countries.

Recognizing how previous marketers and marketing thinkers considered the issues could provide a broad and solid basis to explore how marketing strategy should be formed.

Identifying the antecedents of the 4Ps before the Second World War is a unique contribution to historical research in marketing. This paper provides a new interpretation of the development of marketing management and its thought.

Examines whether business really is undergoing a revolution or just the latest in a series of incremental changes with the universal and seemingly exponential spread of Internet technology. While it is tempting to regard the Internet as a unique challenge through its dual role as a driver of change and provider of tools for change, the article begins by drawing on a number of historical precedents in order to question some of the “hype” surrounding current Internet developments. By analysing relevant literature and primary data from a number of case studies in the UK and the USA, the particular challenges facing marketing are then examined to establish whether there are any parallels in marketing history from which lessons for the future may be learned. From our examples it is concluded that many “new” developments have in fact been practised for centuries and traditional processes are an important constituent of “evolutionary” rather than “revolutionary” innovation.

The introduction of consumer products can be traced back to the invention of the wheel, and after the first invention, humankind discovered that what can be consumable is marketable. Therefore, it is safe to suggest that the development of marketing, in thought and practice, has always been hand-in-hand with the evolution of humankind. Modern Turkey or Anatolia, one of the cradles of civilisation located in the Fertile Crescent or, in other words, Old Mesopotamia, has always been the centre of trade and marketing. As an emerging economy, Turkey has a lot to combine the ways of western practices with market dynamics unique to her, whereas authors find the development of marketing practices in Turkey exceptionally interesting. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide an insight and a brief history regarding the development of the Turkish marketing context throughout the years. We believe that this contribution will be helpful to those who are interested in the development of marketing in an emerging economy in an academic fashion, as well as for those who are attracted to follow the footprints of the modern era’s business environment.

The purpose of this paper is to comment on the meaning and significance of the article by Don Dixon on the change in teaching of marketing theory at Wharton in 1955‐1957.

The paper presents a personal reflection and consideration of the history of marketing research since 1957.

Dixon has throughout his career championed a broad systems framework for understanding marketing. His comments show the beginning of a major shift in marketing theory towards a narrow one sided marketing management focus that limited research and neglected areas that ended up being taken up by other disciplines such as strategic purchasing, supply chains and networks.

Highlights a tipping point in the development of marketing theory that restricted the development of marketing theory.

To examine the lessons that may be learned by both academics and practitioners from a dispassionate review of the history of the marketing profession.

One of the founding fathers of marketing as a subject for academic study in the UK thinks aloud about what he has observed during more than 30 years in a leading UK business school.

The conclusion is that marketing academics exhibit one negative feature of scholarship: failure to take the historical perspective. A mutated variety of the notorious “marketing myopia” causes them to disregard anything written in what they regard as the distant past, and, therefore, to fail to see the larger picture.

Academic researchers in marketing need to look for more basic principles and better rules of thumb, rather than esoteric irrrelevances fit only to grace the pages of the Journal of Obscurity.

If academics thus take a narrow and currently fashionable view, future marketing strategists, at present their students in graduate business schools, will in all probability do likewise.

A “viewpoint” from a privileged vantage point on the high ground.

Definitions of entrepreneurial marketing (EM) abound. Unfortunately, a consensus definition and a unified description of the construct still eludes scholars in the field, as multiple frameworks of EM have been proposed without agreement on which is the most valid and what variables are critical to an EM framework. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive definition and framework of EM.

Following a review of the extant literature pertaining to EM, as well as a brief review of the relevant literature regarding entrepreneurship in general, the authors identified a set of variables common and critical to this marketing approach. The authors then examined the historical case of Lillian McMurry, the founder of Trumpet Records, to provide a historical example of EM. Utilizing an abductive approach, the authors repeatedly analyzed the case alongside the salient literature.

Through a methodology of systematic combining, the authors were able to advance a more comprehensive framework and definition of EM.

The primary limitation of most single case studies is the issue of generalizability. However, the authors accept the trade-off between limited generalizability and the conceptual understanding that this historical case provided.

The proposal of a comprehensive definition and process framework of the relatively nascent construct of EM, supported by a historical case example, provides a solid base upon which future research can investigate the nuances of the variables critical to this emerging marketing approach.

The marketing field established important institutions – college courses, teachable texts, professional associations, and regular conferences – during the first three decades of the twentieth century, but did not fully mature as a scholarly discipline until the first specialized journals were launched in the mid‐1930s. The aim of this paper is to better understand the marketing discipline during this crucial formative period, especially the structure, presentation, and content of marketing knowledge.

The primary sources are The American Marketing Journal and the National Marketing Review, the two predecessor journals that combined to form Journal of Marketing in 1936. They are examined for publishing data and content areas, article format and authorship, and the topics and methods constituting marketing knowledge.

The scholarship published in the first marketing journals was written by single authors who only infrequently cited other works. A wide range of topics were explored with much attention given to issues of marketing and society. Marketing writers considered their field a science and showed confidence in it despite dire environmental conditions.

The primary sources examined have been all but forgotten and deserve to be revisited. The research investigates not only the texts themselves, but the people who wrote them, their professional biographies and associational activities, and the larger academic and social environments of their time.