Journal of Historical Research in Marketing最新文献

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the market dynamics that led to a shift in Swedish consumers' alcohol preferences from schnapps to wine. Specifically, the study investigates how the Swedish state influenced consumers' alcohol habits and highlights the role of governance units in shaping consumer culture.

Design/methodology/approach

The study reconstructs the historical memory of the “Operation Vin”, a strategic marketing campaign implemented by Systembolaget from 1957 to 1985, to conceptualize the past and to uncover the structures and change dynamics of the Swedish alcohol market system. Following this approach, the research contrasts historical data from multiple sources with market-oriented ethnographical data and traces the trajectory of how the consumption of alcohol has changed as a consequence of the Swedish state’s initiatives.

Findings

The study offers two contributions to the literature in marketing and consumption history. Firstly, it uncovers the lines of actions (framing and settlement) involved in creating marketing systems and shaping consumer culture. Secondly, it explores how the state strategically leveraged its social skills to promote a specific type of alcohol consumption (wine) and to induce the Swedish consumer to cooperate in the refashioning of the alcohol field.

Social implications

The authors aspire for this paper to offer valuable insights into how a state, as a governance entity, can shape consumer culture through a strategic blend of various regulatory measures, both gentle and forceful. The authors emphasize the pivotal role of social skills in fostering cooperation during the implementation of a new alcohol policy.

Originality/value

This paper provides valuable insights into the role of the Swedish state in shaping consumer culture and explores the strategic actions and marketing systems involved, contributing to marketing and consumption history literature.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the life history of the Spanish Generation X over the last five decades.

Design/methodology/approach

Considering that the generational cohort concept can be identified from the marketing side as a market segment, this paper proposes to analyze the socio-economic and cultural context that has marked the different life stages of Generation X, and how they have related to brands according to their needs, desires and aspirations.

Findings

The results show that the customer journey can be considered a circular concept. The customer’s relationship with the brand can begin in childhood and continue into adulthood, such that the emotional relationship established with the brand as a child influences purchase decisions in adulthood.

Research limitations/implications

Although limited to the analysis of Generation X and its relationship with brands, this paper shows the importance of knowing the socio-economic, legal and cultural context of a generation.

Practical implications

As a business implication, the importance of remarketing is evident as a business strategy that reinforces the emotional connection between the brand and the different generations.

Social implications

From a social point of view, this paper shows the power of brands as an element of self-expression of the needs, tastes or preferences of individuals is evident.

Originality/value

This paper offers a different and innovative vision of the customer journey, taking into account the individual’s life cycle, and the way in which at each stage of life, he/she relates to brands in a different way.

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Research limitations/implications

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

Originality/value

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.

Purpose

Given the great tourist attractiveness of Spain at international level, tourism has become one of the main sources of income and employment, as well as a basic pillar of the Spanish economy. With these ideas in mind, this paper aims to study how the different promotion strategies implemented in the industry have influenced the evolution of tourism in Spain since the early 20th century.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is a general review, providing a historical examination of the diverse promotion strategies deployed in the tourism industry in Spain over the past decades. It focuses on the descriptive approach of these strategies and their implications throughout the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.

Findings

The findings reveal a shift in recent years from strategies focused on Marketing 1.0 to strategies that, apart from being centered on consumer values (therefore, Marketing 3.0), are beginning to rely to a greater extent on information and communication technologies (ICT) and sustainability, more in line with the more recent Marketing 4.0 and even Marketing 5.0.

Social implications

This work has many implications for the management of public and private operators in the industry, including the need to incorporate the latest marketing trends – most notably the advances in ICT and sustainability.

Originality/value

The study offers an in-depth understanding of how marketing strategies have been used in the tourism sector in Spain from the end of the 19th century to the present day, which is highly original compared to previous studies.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Spain’s success in developing mass tourism between 1950 and 1965.

Design/methodology/approach

This analysis will be carried out from a marketing point of view using the paradigm of the four Ps: product, price, promotion and place, but focusing on the product since, as will be seen, the three other variables had a much lesser impact at that early stage. The product, in holiday tourism, is the destination, a combination in which the main protagonist is the hotel. The authors will analyse the main characteristics of the tourist accommodation on offer in Majorca and Ibiza in two ways: by studying the general statistics on the one hand, and on the other, through the detailed description of two hotel projects focused on the same tourist market but conceptually very different. In the first, a British design from 1956, we see the seed of what could have been and was not. Spain could have been filled with enclave-type tourist destinations with little connection to the local economic network. The second hotel design, on the other hand, shows us the ideal establishment for the exploitation of mass tourism in open destinations.

Findings

In Spain, mass tourism was explosively successful because the local business community was able to offer a very attractive product.

Originality/value

The authors use the architectural designs of two hotels as the central axis of the description of the Spanish tourism product.

Purpose

In recent decades, higher education institutions (HEIs) have increasingly adopted marketing-oriented approaches. While the adoption of marketing was slower in Europe and Spain, it has become a vital tool for HEIs, both to stay competitive in a changing socio-economic context and to face the challenges posed by the transition to the University 2.0 model. This study aims to analyse the historical evolution of communication techniques used by universities, bringing into focus the relevance of social networks in the most recent decades.

Design/methodology/approach

This research methodology consists of two components. Firstly, a comprehensive analysis of the available data is conducted to investigate the earliest marketing and communication actions involving universities, as well as their evolution over time, contextualizing this within the significant shifts in the social, political and technological background. Secondly, a specific focus is placed on the contribution of social media, particularly Twitter, as a powerful tool in creating a university brand and effectively promoting educational institutions, especially during the last stage of this historical evolution. To identify and analyse these trends, Natural Language Processing is used, specifically by leveraging topic modelling techniques.

Findings

The results of this analysis offer insights into the evolution of marketing communication applied by Spanish universities and show the increasing importance of social networks and the use of specific topics and contents to enhance their impact on engagement.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the literature by using a novel methodological approach to the research on the historical development of communication in universities in Spain, providing guidance to manage their social media strategy to differentiate themselves, increase engagement and foster brand loyalty.