Scholarly Traditions and European Roots of American Consumer Research

Abstract

I want to describe the research traditions and the historical roots of the field of consumer behavior and to touch upon selected aspects of the history of marketing in the last half century. My focus will be on the European roots of American consumer behavior as a field of inquiry, not the American roots of European consumer research nor the European roots of European consumer research. My beginning point is somewhere in the 1930s. Prior to World War II, marketing professors were trained in traditional economics rather than marketing science, consumer behavior, and marketing strategy. Good research might consist of a case history or perhaps a detailed interview with a couple of middlemen from which an article would emerge on the functions fulfilled by, say, rack jobbers or wholesalers. Consumer behavior, a term that had not yet emerged, consisted of Marshall’s utility theory [1920]. Research often consisted of some economic theorizing, perhaps analyses of secondary data, and at times, naïve attempts at experimentation and surveys. That situation was soon to change.