Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Volume 1, Issue 2

While this is only the second issue of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, we have actually been accepting submissions since the autumn of 2007. As we write this editorial in March 2009, the paper flow to date has been encouraging. Of those submissions that have entered the review process, 29 percent have been accepted for publication, 50 percent rejected, and the remainder still under review. A total of 11 additional submissions resulted from invitations. The latter are, for the most part, the short papers that appear in the Explorations and Insights (E&I) section. All papers published, including any by the editor, associate editors, or members of the editorial advisory board, undergo a blind review process. The papers published to date, and the research we are looking to publish, have the following qualities.

As the author guidelines state, JHRM welcomes high quality, original research that focuses on marketing history, on the history of marketing thought, and on historiographic discussions relevant to historical research in marketing. Marketing is defined broadly to include the activities involved in commercial exchange and other commercial-like activities. Examples include, but are not limited to, histories of advertising and promotion, retailing, channels of distribution, product design and branding, pricing strategies, and consumption behavior – in other words, the activities associated with marketing broadly defined. For example, this issue of JHRM includes papers dealing with: the history of the J. Walter Thompson (JWT) advertising agency and how it attempted to build trust during the 1930s both within its own organization as well as with the public; how American marketers used research to shape the concept of the consumer at the turn of the twentieth century; the policies and consequences of state-directed consumerism in Iran during the reign of Shah Abbas I of the Safavid dynasty; post World War II motivational research in Australia; and the Americanization of Italian advertising during the 1950s and 1960s. The history of marketing thought includes the histories of marketing ideas, concepts, theories, and schools of thought as well as the lives and times of marketing thinkers. The latter category is especially well represented by issue number 1 of JHRM which celebrated the life and work of marketing scholar and historian, Stanley C. Hollander. The E&I section of this issue also focuses on the history of marketing thought.

We welcome a broad range of historical approaches, philosophical positions, and methodologies. The quality of historical research depends largely on the data sources selected. Primary sources include written documents, images, artifacts, and memories elicited through oral history methods and, as Ronald Savitt points out in his essay herein, one measure of the quality of historical research is its use of primary source material. JHRM encourages the inclusion of visual data sources and readers will note that a few of the papers in this issue are richly illustrated. Of course, the historical era being investigated will influence the mix of primary and secondary source material, and while the value of primary sources needs no justification, some very good marketing history has been written using a fresh interpretation of secondary sources. Primary source material relating to pre-industrial era marketing is much more difficult to find than, say, that relating to the twentieth century. Traditional qualitative analyses of small samples of source material as well as quantitative analyses of appropriately large samples have both been used to study marketing history. Historians are not generally methodological zealots. Yet, we expect our readership will range from scholars trained in history, working in history departments, to marketing scholars working in business schools. Our readers' backgrounds and training are varied. So, while it is not necessary to include a separate research method section, some explicit discussion of sources and their selection should be included. If content analysis or some other statistical method of analysis is used, an appropriate description including rating reliabilities should be included. In short, authors should provide some transparency about their historiographic approach.

The process of analysis and writing are interwoven. The sine qua non of historical writing is clarity. If reviewers cannot decipher what an author means, the submission will not survive the review process. While history can be used to test marketing theory and to develop marketing policy, we are also firm believers in the value of history for its own sake. Nevertheless, the contribution of a paper to the marketing history literature must be made clear. We strongly recommend reading Ladik and Stewart (2008) for an enlightening discussion of the meaning and importance of the contribution continuum. Why is your paper important? What will readers learn that is not already known? Answering those questions requires that authors have a solid knowledge of the existing marketing history literature – and it has grown dramatically over the past 25 years or so.

In this issue

A wide range of topics, as mentioned above, is included in this issue. It is a fascinating group of articles that has a truly international flavor dealing with marketing history in America, Italy, Iran, and Australia. The history of market research, about which little has been written, is the topic of two papers. Two other papers contribute to the popular field of advertising history. Most of the papers in this issue focus on marketing during the twentieth century. However, the Minowa and Witkowski paper takes us back to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Archival research, visual source material, and biographical accounts are all featured in this issue.

The lead paper is Ronald Savitt's “Teaching and studying marketing history: a personal journey”. Savitt (1980) published what has become one of the most cited history papers in the marketing literature, the title of which was instrumental in the naming of this journal. Savitt's “Historical research in marketing” (1980) was an early attempt to articulate some of the historiographic issues faced by marketing scholars who wish to do historical research, as well as a rallying cry for more historical research by marketing scholars and, as such, it created a bridge to the mainstream marketing journals for publishing historical research. In this issue of JHRM, Savitt uses the format of a memoir to describe what he has learned about doing historical research over the last 30 years, how he learned, and how those lessons can be applied to historical research and teaching in marketing.

In “Capitalism, early market research, and the creation of the American consumer”, Douglas B. Ward focuses on the Curtis Publishing Company, which created one of the first market research departments in America during the early twentieth century, to argue that publishers and advertisers gave businesses a working concept of the consumer and helped shape society's ideals of the consumer. Ward's study draws upon primary source materials from the Curtis Publishing Company Papers at the University of Pennsylvania and from the J. Walter Thompson Collection at Duke University's Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History as well as from period publications.

Amanda McLeod's ‘“Pseudo-scientific hokus pokus’ motivational research's Australian application” also deals with the history of market research, an understudied topic in marketing history. McLeod examines the post World War II contributions to motivational research by David T. Bottomley, Australia's foremost proponent of motivational research.

Karen E. Mishra's paper, titled “J. Walter Thompson: building trust in troubled times”, is based on archival research using the J. Walter Thompson Collection at Duke University's Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History. Mishra examines the meeting minutes of private forums held by the JWT advertising agency between 1936 and 1938. Those rare and intimate meetings were used to build trust among executives within the JWT organization as well as with the public in the 1930s. This was a time when the advertising industry was under public scrutiny for using what consumers considered emotional and irrational appeals in their advertising practices.

Simona de Iulio and Carlo Vinti's “The Americanization of Italian advertising during the 1950s and 1960s: mediations, conflicts and appropriations” also deals with advertising history and continues the international theme of this issue. de Iulio and Vinti explore the Americanization of Italian advertising in the post World War II years as a phenomenon of cultural transfer by examining the ways in which US advertising rules and patterns were adapted or combined with the local tradition in order to fit the Italian context of the post-war years.

In “State promotion of consumerism in Safarid Iran: Shah Abbas I and royal silk textiles”, Yuko Minowa and Terry Witkowski draw from Middle Eastern studies and art history to describe the use of state resources to promote domestic consumption, consumer marketing in the Middle East, and the promotional roles played by architecture and its decorative elements during the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. One interesting feature of this paper is the authors' description and analysis of the visual content and consumption themes of a selected tile painting. JHRM readers in Britain may have seen the recent exhibit (ending June 14, 2009) at the British Museum exploring the reign and legacy of Shah Abbas I.

Finally, the E&I section includes a set of commentaries about a recently published three-volume set of readings on the history of marketing thought.

Explorations and insights

The E&I section of JHRM will not normally publish book reviews. Rather, at the end of this section under the title “The literature keeps growing” we periodically will briefly note recent publications deemed worthy of reader attention. As well, in the E&I section we will publish bibliographical reviews of the relevant literature on specific topics, practices or time periods. However, from time to time recent publications deemed especially worthy contributions to the literature on marketing history and/or the history of marketing thought will receive much more attention.

Even on these occasions, however, the volume in question will not be the subject of a conventional review, one that focuses primarily on familiarizing readers with the content of the publication. Rather, those with recognized expertise in the same area as the original authors or editors will be invited to use the published work as both a launching pad and as a point of reference or comparison for their own views on the subject. These invited commentaries will be expected to add academic value in their own right. Such commentaries are the mainstay of the Journal of Economic Literature but they are rarely found in marketing's own journal literature.

The first publication to receive such attention is the recently published Tadajewski and Jones (2008) three-volume collection of readings on The History of Marketing Thought. Given the scope of this collection, it seemed best that one of the collection's editors first be invited to familiarize readers with the guidelines used in selecting, from among a much broader set of possibilities, the papers that were to be included. Such a context is provided by Mark Tadajewski and his remarks are accompanied by a complete listing of the papers actually chosen. Three invited commentaries then follow, each by an individual who also possesses considerable “marketing thought” expertise.

The first of the commentaries, by Eric H. Shaw, argues the case for historical thinking as a way of dealing with still unresolved problems in marketing thought. Shaw then evaluates the collection, in terms of both adequacy and completeness, were it to be used for such a purpose. Robert D. Tamilia next presents the history of marketing thought within a broader and longer term historical context than, he maintains, one finds in the assembled collection. Tamilia also argues the case for more bibliographical research, especially on pioneer practitioners of marketing whose contributions also helped influence both marketing thought and marketing practice. Finally, Göran Svensson first explores how the assembled collection of papers relates to the complexity sciences and then argues for a greater focus on that relationship by marketing theorists. Each of these three contributions is worth careful examination because each does indeed add considerable academic value in its own right.

This E&I section is longer than those one will find in most subsequent issues. However, the publication of the “major work” in question provided a unique opportunity for focusing both on the current status and possible future development of marketing thought. To do this required lengthier contributions than will be the E&I norm. Nevertheless, it seemed essential that in this case each contributor be allowed to fully develop his ideas. We trust but obviously do not yet know if readers will approve of the approach taken in this E&I section. Should you personally wish to convey your views either on this particular issue or any other E&I matter, feel free to contact Stan Shapiro electronically at: sshapiro@sfu.ca

Brian Jones and Stanley Shapiro