ILL historical research in marketing continue to be undertaken mainly by nonmarketing scholars?
The question arises because marketing scholars have given little attention to this part of the discipline. More than 10 years have passed since the publication of the last major work in marketing history (Shapiro and Doody 1968), and business historians are wondering why the history of marketing has not interested marketing scholars (Hidy 1977, p. 19). Part of the void has been filled by business and economic historians who are making contributions to the marketing literature, but they are not writing marketing history. Such scholars have produced important works, such as the economic history of American wholesale middlemen in the nineteenth century (Porter and Livesay 1971). However, they do not do justice to marketing history in the way marketing scholars would.
Among the reasons advanced for the absence of historical research in marketing are the lack of appreciation of its importance and the lack of a method. The purpose of this article is to offer a rationale for such historical research and a method which can be applied in marketing. A brief sketch of the state of marketing history is presented as background.
Why Study Marketing
History? Historical study adds a robust quality to a discipline. It enables scholars within the discipline, as well as society at large, to gain an understanding of its origins and its patterns of change. Such study relates a discipline to its own past and to other disciplines. Historical study helps to establish an identity for a discipline by providing some idea of where it is and what it is. Historical research can also be used in the verification and synthesis of hypotheses, "the cumulative result being the promotion of theory" (Doody 1965, p. 557). It can be done at the micro level as in the case of market segmentation. The study of Josiah Wedgwood, the English porcelain manufacturer, provides new bases for understanding the origins of segmentation (McKendrick 1960). Historical research can also add to the development of macro theories such as proposed by Alderson (1965) and more recently by Bagozzi (1978). Cassady, in his studies of food retailing, argued this point. Historical studies of market behavior would provide a better understanding of how markets and competitors do behave than the current theories based on how they are supposed to behave (Cassady 1963).
Some Basic Issues
Marketing history is defined by the content of marketing. Assume that marketing is the discipline which describes and explains the operation of markets in terms of all