History of Marketing Channels in North America: An Abstract

Abstract

As the history of marketing thought is disappearing in doctoral education, there is a need to analyze the development of marketing channels from a historical perspective. There is an opportunity for marketing education and practice to make better decisions by understanding more about how marketing channels developed and the forces behind the present. This paper uses a descriptive approach, which focuses on a synthesis of the work of early scholars, recorded facts, census data and our acquired knowledge. Proceedings from the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research (CHARM) and the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing provide a rich source of information. In addition, Robert Bartels provided books on the history of marketing thought (Bartels 1976). Various other scholars provided facts on the development of retailing (Hollander 1959) and wholesaling (Beckman 1926). Our purpose is to provide an overview that helps to explain how marketing channels and their institutional members provide a foundation for the existing structure. In other words, how did we get here? While marketing has been practiced for thousands of years, marketing scholarship has gained prominence over only the last 120 years (Ferrell et al. 2015). Possibly the first course in marketing was Distributive and Regulatory Industries taught at the University of Michigan. Arch Shaw (1912) “viewed marketing as demand stimulation and physical distribution.” During this stage of marketing development, distribution was a major theme often tied to understanding the marketing of commodities (Weld 1916). L.P.H. Weld (1916) laid the foundation for the study of how marketing channel members influence marketing strategy (Shaw and Jones 2005). He is called the “founding father of the institutional school” (Sheth et al. p.74). Classifying intermediaries provided greater understanding of functions and the creation of value in the marketing channel. When we think of a marketing channel, we most often think of it as consisting of a focal firm, usually a manufacturer, followed by wholesalers and distributors who perform a number of functions to get the products to the right places, and then retailers who make the products available and carry most of the promotion function, directly to consumers. Channels historically represents this movement of information, goods and finances between a firm and its customers. This paper focuses on the development of marketing channels in the US and Canada since 1850 from both the academic and industry perspectives.