Foundations of Marketing Thought: The Influence of the German Historical School

by D.G. Brian Jones, Mark Tadajewski

Overview

The study and teaching of marketing as a university subject is generally understood to have originated in America during the early 20^th century emerging as an applied branch of economics. This book tells a different story describing the influence of the German Historical School on institutional economists and economic historians who pioneered the study of marketing in America and Britain during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Drawing from archival materials at the University of Wisconsin, Harvard Business School, and the University of Birmingham, this book documents the early intellectual genealogy of marketing science and traces the ideas that early American and British economists borrowed from German scholars to study and teach marketing. Early marketing scholars both in America and Britain openly credited the German School, and its ideology based on social welfare and distributive justice was a strong motivation for many institutional economists who studied marketing in America, predating the modern macro-marketing school by many decades.

Challenging many traditional beliefs, this book provides an authoritative new narrative of the origins of marketing thought. It will be of great interest to educators, scholars and advanced students with an interest in marketing theory and history, and in the history of economic thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138181809
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/14/2017
Series:	Routledge Studies in the History of Marketing
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

D.G. Brian Jones is the founding Editor of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing and co-editor of the Routledge Studies in the History of Marketing. His research focuses on the history of marketing thought and has been published widely.

Mark Tadajewski is the Editor of the Journal of Marketing Management, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, the co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Critical Marketing and the Routledge Studies in the History of Marketing series.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter One: Introduction

Historical Research in Marketing

Collegiate Education for Business – and Marketing

The Emerging Marketing Discipline

Origins in Economic Thought

Method and Overview

Conclusion

Chapter Two: The German Historical School of Economics

Introduction

The Migration of American Students to Germany

Science in the Service of Industry

The German Historical School of Economics

The Older School

The Younger School

Influence of the German Historical School of Economics

Conclusion

Chapter Three: Foundations of Marketing Thought at the University of Wisconsin

Introduction

The Conditions of Possibility for Richard T. Ely at Wisconsin

Ely Arrives at Wisconsin

Back to Classical Economics and Beyond

Ely’s Trial: Economic Heresy

Wisconsin Students of the German Historical School

Edward David Jones

Henry Charles Taylor

Economics and Commerce at Wisconsin

Conclusion

Chapter Four: Foundations of Marketing Thought at the University of Illinois

Introduction

Simon Litman and the Foundations of Marketing Thought

University of California (1902 – 1908)

University of Illinois (1908 – 1948)

Conclusion

Appendix 4.1 Outline of "Mechanism & Technique of Commerce"

Chapter Five: Foundations of Marketing Thought at the University of Birmingham, UK

Introduction

William James Ashley (1860 – 1927)

Business Education in Britain

Ashley – Economic Historian and Business Educator

Moving to Birmingham

Business Economics and Marketing

Teaching Commercial Policy (Marketing):

"Business Policy" and the "Commerce Seminar"

Conclusion

Chapter Six: Foundations of Marketing Thought at Harvard and Beyond

Introduction

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Formative Influences on the Harvard Business School

Edwin Francis Gay

What to Teach?

Scientific Management and German Historicism

Arch W. Shaw on Frederick Taylor

Methodology for Teaching Marketing

Research in Marketing at Harvard – A Simple Scientific Endeavor

Arch W. Shaw - The Functions of Marketing

Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Conclusions

Introduction

Rewriting Marketing History

The Influence of the German Historical School

Being Perceived as Unorthodox in a Time of Social Pressure

Conclusion

Chapter Eight: Epilogue: The Contradictions of Progressivism and Future Research

Introduction

From Accusations of Socialism to Patriotism

Complexity and Marketing History: The Dark Side

Ways Forward

Marketing and Deflation of Prejudice

Discussion and Conclusion

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

The Foundations of Marketing Thought: The Influence of the German Historical School provides a fitting prequel and welcome addition to Bartels’ renowned History of Marketing Thought. Foundations significantly extends Bartels’ intellectual genesis of marketing in the academy to the teachers who influenced the earliest pioneers of marketing thought in the United States as well as the United Kingdom. The authors also offer extensive new details into the lives and careers of the marketing pioneers themselves. The book delivers a superbly illuminating origin story of academic marketing. As such, this work belongs on every marketing historian’s bookshelf.

Erik Shaw, Professor of Marketing, College of Business, Florida Atlantic University, USA.

Which intellectual traditions influenced significantly the approaches of the founders of the marketing discipline in the early 1900s? In Foundations of Marketing Thought, D. G. Brian Jones and Mark Tadajewski present detailed, well-sourced, and careful arguments that show that the German Historical School was much more influential than has hitherto been documented, or even acknowledged. No serious student of marketing’s intellectual history can—or should—ignore Foundations’ arguments.

Shelby D. Hunt, The Jerry S. Rawls and P.W. Horn Professor of Marketing, Rawls College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, USA.

This path breaking monograph will almost certainly have a revolutionary impact on our understanding of the early history of marketing thought. Drawing upon their painstaking archival research, Tadajewski and Jones reveal areas where Bartels, previously the unquestioned authority in this area, was incomplete in his coverage and, as regards the importance of the German Historical School, just plain wrong. The myriad of linkages that existed between that School of Thought and American

From the Publisher