As Nevett and Hollander (1994) note, marketing history brings to the study of marketing an expansion of intellectual boundaries. This broadening of perspective may well be essential if marketing -about to complete a golden century as a formal discipline -is to maintain its key role in boosting corporate performance. That is, by conducting research in and incorporating inputs from, such fields as history, geography, economics, and sociology, marketing historians offer understanding and explanations of factors or conditions that influence marketing thought and practice. Nonetheless, the subdiscipline is of primary interest to only a small minority within the profession.
A special edition thus represents a timely opportunity to evaluate this puzzling disinterest in widening the boundaries of marketing. For even among those familiar with the literature, no one claims that history will repeat. But, as Hollander and Nevett (1995) point out, there are many analogues between past and present marketing processes; short-sighted marketing endeavors of the past often have a way of being tried again. Also documentable are instances where marketing campaigns today, including those of nonprofit/public-sector institutions, are closely linked to past successes, with details buried in corporate archives, in the memories of long-retired colleagues, or in secondary sources for many pre-20th-century activities. It is clearly time to heed a conclusion of Hollander and Nevett that anyone trying to direct marketing's attention to the past need not offer a long rationale. However, five issues appear to us