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I am a passionate advocate for historical research. It provides insight, context, illuminates the dynamics of our discipline and should anchor everything we think, write, and profess in the present. Careful historical research can question, undermine, and revise the existing set of representations that underwire our subject. It may help us untangle why certain views of the subject, topic, period, or person remain in wide currency, explaining the power relations, politics, institution building and wider discursive and non-discursive factors that foreclose, enhance, or otherwise influence what we think, write, teach, and practice. We desperately need more research that challenges everything we take for granted and fail to subject to scrutiny. This paper reflects a call to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews 30 years of interdisciplinary scholarship that deals with marketing history or the history of marketing thought. We have ranged across the humanities and social sciences to review the very best scholarship that these domains have produced which speaks to issues likely to concern the readers of the Journal of Marketing Management (JMM). These domains include: the history of marketing management, history of market research, history of market segmentation, product management history, retailing and channels history, promotion history, advertising history, the history of marketing thought, and marketing and the management of subjectivity, among others. Given obvious page limitations we have nevertheless tried to appeal to the paradigmatic span of the readers of the JMM. With this in mind, we have critically reviewed material that will be of interest to managerially oriented academics, as well as those who subscribe to consumer culture theoretics and critical marketing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a close reading of Daniel Defoe’s The Complete English Tradesman. It makes a case that many of the themes that Defoe engages with are consistent with later arguments offered by relationship marketing scholars. Design/methodology/approach – This is a close reading of one of Defoe’s most popular texts, The Complete English Tradesman. It links this discussion with relationship marketing tenets. Findings – Defoe pays considerable attention to key relational ideas, including the cultivation of a public perception of business honesty, the need to cater to customer requirements, treating the customer as the “idol” of the practitioner and undertaking a variety of actions to ensure that consumers trust the words and actions of the tradesman. Practical implications – This paper highlights how ahistorical debates surrounding relationship marketing have been and calls for a return to the archives. Originality/value – This paper supplements existing research that charts the implications for marketing thought of Defoe’s work, extending this via a juxtaposition of his writing with relational tenets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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. Originality/value – 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an intellectual biography of Percival White whose major contributions to marketing thought focused on market research and the application of scientific management to marketing. White published 20 books during his career, 11 of those dealing with marketing, including one of the earliest texts on market research. Like other pioneers in the marketing discipline, White’s legacy also includes major contributions to marketing practice. His company, Market Research Corporation of America, represented some of the best technical practices of the 1930s. Unlike many other pioneers in marketing whose education was in economics, White’s background was in industrial engineering. He considered himself a marketing engineer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the history of relationship marketing (RM) is challenged. Similar to discussions of the marketing concept, the debates surrounding RM are largely ahistorical. This is despite numerous scholars indicating that RM has a far longer history than is currently appreciated. In contrast to received wisdom that RM emerged in the late 1970s, it is demonstrated that RM themes have been present in the marketing literature for longer than is recognized by the contemporary scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine relationship marketing from an historical perspective. As a predominantly industrial marketing strategy, reciprocity was adopted by numerous organizations and discussed in detail by marketing scholars from the 1920s until the late 1970s, and these debates indicate that reciprocity was largely relationship marketing orientated in nature. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reciprocity had fallen into disrepute. In its place arose 'trade relations' and trade relations management. Reciprocity was marginalized, this paper documents, due to the focus of the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department and the Supreme Court on a number of prominent cases of anticompetitive reciprocity. From trade relations, debates pertaining to 'corporate diplomacy', 'diplomatic marriage brokers', 'business relations' and relationship marketing developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]