Abstract
Those who want to understand macromarketing must come to terms with the ideas, values, and approaches that shaped marketing from the beginning. Without doing so, ideas appear without context and without meaning. Those who want to understand macromarketing must read this book.
Foundations of Marketing Thought: The Influence of the German Historical School is a book many years in the making. As explained in the Acknowledgements, it began when David Monieson proposed to his students at Queen’s University, Canada, that the German Historical School of Economics (GHSE) was a profound influence on the pioneers of academic marketing. This ran counter to the generally accepted notion that they were influenced by classical and neoclassical economics. For his doctoral dissertation Brian Jones (1987) answered Monieson’s clarion call, following it three years later with an article based on the dissertation (Jones and Monieson 1990). Thus began a career devoted to investigating the history of marketing thought and the history of marketing. Now, joined by Mark Tadajewski, another eminent scholar devoted to historical analysis, they have given us this powerful analysis of the beginning of our discipline. The story they tell is compelling. Beyond that, the work is an example of superbly done historical research, especially due to the extensive use of archival material.
This book is not only for those interested in the history of marketing thought, or those interested in macromarketing. It is for all marketers—faculty and students, especially doctoral students—and would be of interest to certain economists, too. Those that read the book will better understand the origins and essence of early marketing as an academic discipline and gain new respect for the strength and dominance, at the turn to the 20th century, of what we today call macromarketing.
The book as made up of three parts, each containing two or more chapters. The first part introduces their project and the German Historical School of Economics. The second part constitutes the core of the book as each of four chapters deals with what they call a center of influence in the development of early marketing. The third part consists of a Conclusion and an Epilogue.
To his credit Bartels did identify early pioneers in marketing and traced their connections forward. Jones and Tadajewski began with Bartels’ pioneers and traced their connections backward. Jones and Tadajewski searched to identify those under whom the early pioneers of marketing studied, and what may have influenced them. The result is a substantially different picture of the beginnings of marketing than what Bartels saddled us with. Rather than having been influenced by classical and neoclassical economics, Jones and Tadajewski reveal that the pioneers of marketing were trained in and influenced by economists that were, themselves, students in Germany, studying under economists of the German Historical School, or influenced by those who did study under the economists of the German Historical School.
That the origins of this misperception can be placed at the feet of Bartels in one thing. That the misperception in common, or at least easily arrived at, is itself easily illustrated. Take, for example, Sheth and Parvatiyar’s comment, “the discipline of marketing grew out of economics” (1995, p. 401). Without qualification or historical context, of which they provide little, it is easy to read this, although they do not say it, as though marketing grew out of classical and neoclassical economics. The movement from their statement that “the discipline of marketing grew out of economics” to a presumption that the pioneers of academic marketing were influenced by classical or neoclassical economics is easy to arrive at when one considers the vantage point from which we look backward, a vantage point that accepts (or assumes) that all economics is derived from classical and neoclassical economics. That, itself, is a misperception that arises from a general lack of understanding regarding the later 1880s to World War I, the period during which academic marketing emerged. At that formative period American economics was not dominated, as it was in England, by the economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Marshall. It was, rather, highly unsettled in nature with all sorts of ideas, approaches, and schools of thought contending for attention, including the German Historical School (Rutherford 1997; 2011). The GHSE had considerable influence in America due to the large numbers of economists who studied in Germany (Dorfman 1955). Jones and Tadajewski want marketers to appreciate how the GHSE influenced the development and emergence of marketing as an academic discipline. They are clear, too, in wanting to bring the work of the GHSE to the intellectual foreground by connecting it to the emergence of marketing.
Jones and Tadajewski argue for a complete reorientation of how we understand the origins of marketing thought. In the process they are undermining “the foundations that Bartels postulated as the architecture for modern marketing as we know it” (p. 18). In the process they also demonstrate that early academic marketers were not primarily driven by managerial issues and concerns. That is, they were not, in today’s parlance, micromarketers. They were driven “by questions of ethics, social justice, and social betterment” (p. 18). In the process Jones and Tadajewski expose “a different vision of the discipline” than what most hold today. Nowhere do they say it, but I will. Early academic marketers were macromarketers.
The second chapter explains the German Historical School of Economics (GHSE)—its history, origins, epistemology, methodology, axiology, pedagogical values, and political principles. This is not an original interpretation of the GHSE but a re-presentation of what is already known and generally agreed upon by those that study it (principally, those specializing in the history of economic thought).
This is a necessary chapter for two reasons. First, since their claim is that the origins of marketing lie in the GHSE, it is mandatory that they explain the GHSE to their readers before laying out those connections. Second, it is mandatory that they do so because the GHSE is largely ignored by economists, even by those that write the history of economic thought textbooks. Those textbooks (with rare exception) follow the mainstream development of economics from mercantilism to modern neoclassicism. All else is an aside to the main story—and is brushed aside. The same can be said regarding how institutional economics is treated in those textbooks (Rutherford 1997). Whatever the case may be, many if not most American marketers will be unfamiliar with the names, ideas, and contributions of the GHSE to economics much less to marketing.
I will not try to summarize what they say in these chapters. I will say that Jones and Tadajewski provide rich and detailed accounts to justify their focus on the places where early marketers flourished and developed, and that these accounts are based largely on archival research. I will also point out that the case of Birmingham in the U.K. has largely been overlooked. As they write, “perhaps the most significant untold story about the foundations of academic marketing is that of William Ashley and the University of Birmingham” (p. 158). (Ashley is generally considered an historical economist of the English school.)
I will assert that now that their account exists one cannot consider himself or herself well versed in marketing or macromarketing without fully understanding why and how these centers of influence are considered important. Indeed, if there were a history of marketing thought textbook prior to the present book, as there are in other disciplines (and I do not believe there is one), the GHSE would not only have been brushed aside, it would have been ignored. Such a textbook written today would have to give the GHSE early and central treatment.
studied in Germany under leading figures in the German Historical School of Economics, or under other American economists who were so trained and who repeatedly acknowledged the influence of the GHSE.
In the process they were instrumental in developing “this new field of applied economics called marketing” (p. 154). We can now, because of the scholarship of Jones and Tadajewski, appreciate that the influence of the GHSE on early marketing.
It is both interesting and important to note, however, that early marketing academics did not always publicly acknowledge the influence of the GHSE, although they did so privately (as was learned from the archives). Why ignore it? Jones and Tadajewski suggest we pay closer attention to the wider cultural context, focusing on the social climate leading up to the first World War. “We suspect,” they write, “that a need to distance marketing scholarship and research from any perceived associations with Germany was a motivator in the refusal to acknowledge the influence of the GHSE” (pp. 162-163). Perhaps, they continue, “criticizing Germany and its desire for world domination was important” (p. 166).
Jones and Tadajewski are not saying that everything that had previously been written about the history of marketing thought and marketing practice was mistaken. They are saying only that there have been omissions and over-simplifications and that they want to correct some of those omissions and over-simplifications.
By bringing issues of axiology, epistemology and—highly unusual for marketing theory—politics into their discussion they have unraveled a multitude of factors that impacted early marketing. Politically speaking, what Jones and Tadajewski see is that the GHSE was a mediating mid-point between socialism on the left and raw laissez-faire capitalism on the right. Early marketing academics addressed the multitude problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption, and as they did they served to mediate the extremes as marketing and consumption were linked in the battle to defuse the appeal of socialism. The pioneers of marketing, under the influence of the GHSE, sought to integrate the working classes into the social system with the minimum of friction. “Their common response,” Jones and Tadajewski write, “was to preemptively defuse the appeal of radical social change movements” (p. 168). To those economists that complain or bemoan that progressive economists were not progressive enough (they cite Bateman 2003), Jones and Tadajewski recommend they “look to marketing scholars and practice” because it was “within our discipline that progressive ideas and values were translated into operational guidance for business people” (p. 167).
As the reader will have discovered after reading the second chapter and the four core chapters, Jones and Tadajewski have threaded political-economic perspectives throughout Foundations of Marketing Thought: The Influence of the German Historical School. And that is as it should be.
This book could well serve as the foundation for rethinking and revising what we know about marketing in general and elevate macromarketing to the head of the class. In so doing marketing, in general, may be reoriented.
