Editorial

Citation

Jones, B. and Shapiro, S. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 2 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jhrm.2010.41202baa.001

Editorial

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

Welcome to three new members of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (JHRM) Editorial Advisory Board – Tracey Deutsch, Department of History, University of Minnesota; Barry Boothman, Faculty of Business Administration, University of New Brunswick-Fredericton; and Fred Beard, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Oklahoma.

Every year the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence are given for the outstanding article and two or three highly commended articles from the preceding publication year of each journal published by Emerald. We are pleased to announce the 2009 JHRM outstanding article, “Capitalism, early market research, and the creation of the American consumer” by Doug Ward published in JHRM, volume 1, issue 2. Two articles were also recognized with highly commended awards: Ron Savitt’s “Teaching and studying marketing history: a personal journey” in volume 1, issue 2; and Terry Witkowski’s “General book store in Chicago, 1938-1947: linking neighborhood to nation” in volume 1, issue 1. Our congratulations and thanks are extended to those authors. If you have not read each issue of volume 1 from cover to cover, you should at least read these papers!

From the articles you must read to the papers you will likely never read […] the most common reason for JHRM submissions to be rejected is that they are not essentially historical in perspective. Perhaps, the editorial statement on the journal’s webpage is not clear. If so, we would like to try to clarify what we mean by historical research in marketing. As the author guidelines state, JHRM welcomes high quality, original research that focuses on marketing history, on the history of marketing thought, and/or historiographic discussions relevant to historical research in marketing. Marketing history includes, but is not limited to, the histories of advertising, retailing, channels of distribution, product design and branding, pricing strategies, market research, and consumption behaviour – all studied from the perspective of individuals, companies, industries, or of whole economies and societies. The history of marketing thought examines the histories of marketing ideas, concepts, theories, and schools of marketing thought including the lives and times of marketing thinkers. This includes biographical studies as well as histories of institutions and associations involved in the development of the marketing discipline. We welcome manuscripts that deal with the origins, growth, and development of both marketing history and the history of marketing thought. All time frames and geographical settings are of interest. Pedagogical and historiographical/methodological essays are also welcome as long as they are grounded in a marketing and historical perspective. The distinguishing theme of any research published in JHRM is its historical perspective. The essence of an historical perspective is a thorough, systematic, critical and sophisticated awareness of the changes (or continuity) in events over time and of the context in which change or continuity occurs. Historical research requires a coherent recreation of what happened and the significance of what happened, a narration of those events through time including the analysis and explanation of the causes and consequences of those events. Outstanding examples of marketing history are the articles by Ward and Witkowski cited above. Savitt’s is an outstanding example of historiography in marketing. We could cite Mark Tadajewski’s fine piece in volume 1, issue 1, “Competition, cooperation and open price associations: relationship marketing and Arthur Jerome Eddy (1859-1920)” as an outstanding example of the history of marketing thought.

In this issue

This issue features three full papers and an Explorations & Insights section focusing on the life and work of one marketing scholar, David D. Monieson. Two of the full papers deal with advertising history, the other with market segmentation history. In “George Washington Hill and the ‘Reach for a Lucky…’ campaign”, Fred Beard and Anna Klyueva examine what is arguably the most controversial advertising campaign of all time, a campaign run during the late 1920s and early 1930s which explicitly attempted to encourage smoking among women by linking cigarettes with themes of slenderness and youth. Ronald A. Fullerton’s “‘A virtual social H-bomb’: the late 1950s controversy over subliminal advertising” investigates the 1957 beginnings of the controversy over subliminal advertising as news of a supposedly successful test of subliminal advertising became widely disseminated. Fullerton concludes that the wildly overblown reactions at the time to news about subliminal advertising can be explained by a paranoid and fearful intellectual climate in the USA. The third full paper in this issue, “Silver dollars: the development of the US elderly market segment” by Blaine J. Branchik, focuses on the history of the US senior market segment. Branchik periodizes the evolution of the American senior segment into three phases:

1. 1.

   from the mid-nineteenth century to 1935;

2. 2.

   from 1936 to 1965; and

3. 3.

   from 1965 to the present.

Illustrating the confluence of government policy, market segmentation and product differentiation strategies, and the importance of demographic change.

Explorations & Insights

The entire Explorations & Insights section of this issue is devoted to an exploration of David D. (Danny) Monieson’s contribution to the marketing discipline. Dr Monieson was not all that well known throughout academic marketing. Those obsessed with citation counts will not be overly impressed with the Monieson numbers as compared to others. One might even argue that the Editors of JHRM, three of whose careers were in varying degrees shaped by their contact with Monieson, might not have been the best choices for assessing his intellectual impact. Such views notwithstanding, we believe that David D. Monieson did in his own right make a very significant contribution in both the “usable knowledge” and the “history of marketing thought” areas. These contributions more than warrant his being one of three academics, the others being Stan Hollander and Don Dixon, whose work is being assessed in early issues of JHRM.

The first of the five contributions in this Explorations & Insights section, “The intellectual odyssey of David D. Monieson (1927-2008): a quest for usable knowledge” by D.G. Brian Jones, Peggy Cunningham, Paula McLean and Stanley Shapiro, deals with Monieson’s focus on and quest for “usable knowledge” How this focus contributed to his skepticism as to the value of the kinds of academic research in marketing generally held in high esteem is also explored. Because of space limitations, this paper does not provide very much biographical information on Monieson. Such information, fortunately, is available in an earlier version of the paper (Jones et al., 2009) presented at the 2009 CHARM Conference and now available at the CHARM web site.

The second contribution to this Explorations & Insights section, “A historical survey concerning marketing middlemen as producers of value”, is a previously unpublished chapter drawn from the doctoral dissertation David D. Monieson wrote at Ohio State University in 1957. The supervisor of that work was the redoubtable Theodore Beckman. Dr Beckman was one of the earliest to argue that, prevailing views to the contrary, marketing as an activity did indeed “add value”. Monieson explored this issue in his dissertation and the chapter being reproduced herein contains his review of the relevant literature. He identifies and discusses in that chapter sources which, unfortunately, are still neither currently appreciated nor even recognized by most marketing academics.

Mark Tadajewski, the author of “Reading Professor David D. Monieson: humanism, pluralism and intellectualization” in this collection, is also a JHRM Associate Editor but one who has never even met Danny Monieson. Tadajewski, arguably one of academic marketing’s most productive young scholars, maintains among other things that Monieson, though a very successful consultant who believed the business world should be the laboratory of the business professor, nevertheless had much to say of relevance to critical marketing thought. The final two contributions in this section, “David D. Monieson: memories of inspired learning” by Susanna Trebuss and “Remembering Danny Monieson: reflections on a mentor and a friend” by Stanley J. Shapiro, are more personal statements that explore both the intellectual impact and the lasting legacy of the years they were fortunate enough to have spent with Danny Monieson.

Brian Jones, Stanley Shapiro