The study of the history of marketing, as a discipline, is important because it helps to define the baselines upon which change can be recognised and understand how the discipline evolves in response to those changes. The practice of marketing has been known for millennia, but the term "marketing" used to describe commercial activities assisting the buying and selling of products or services came into popular use in the late nineteenth century.English Language and Usage, http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/335201/etymology-of-marketing-how-when-did-it-change-meaning The study of the history of marketing as an academic field emerged in the early twentieth century.Brian Jones, D.G. and Shaw, E.H, "The History of Marketing Thought," in Handbook of Marketing, Weitz, R. and Wensley, R. (eds), London, UK, 2003, p. 50
Marketers tend to distinguish between the history of marketing practice and the history of marketing thought:
the history of marketing practice refers to an investigation into the ways that marketing has been practiced; and how those practices have evolved over time as they respond to changing socio-economic conditions the history of marketing thought refers to an examination of the ways that marketing has been studied and taught
Although the history of marketing thought and the history of marketing practice are distinct fields of study, they intersect at different junctures.
Robert J. Keith's article "The Marketing Revolution", published in 1960, was a pioneering study of the history of marketing practice.Keith, R. J., "The Marketing Revolution," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 24, No. 1; Jul 1959 – Apr 1960, pp 35–38 In 1976, the publication of Robert Bartel's book, The History of Marketing Thought, marked a turning-point in the understanding of how marketing theory evolved since it first emerged as a separate discipline around the turn of last century.Bartels, R., The History of Marketing Thought, Columbus, Ohio, Grid, 1976.
Etymology
According to etymologists, the term 'marketing' first appeared in dictionaries in the sixteenth century where it referred to the process of buying and selling at a market.Etymology Dictionary Online, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=marketing The contemporary definition of 'marketing' as a process of moving goods from producer to consumer with an emphasis on sales and advertising first appeared in dictionaries in 1897. The term, marketing, is a derivation of the Latin word, mercatus meaning marketplace or merchant.Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/marketing
Marketing history: an overview
Historians of marketing tend to fall into two branches of marketing history – the history of marketing practice and the history of marketing thought. These branches are often deeply divided and have very different roots. The history of marketing practice is grounded in the management and marketing disciplines, while the history of marketing thought is grounded in economic and cultural history. This means that the two branches ask very different types of research questions, and they employ different research tools and frameworks.Berghoff, H., Scranton. P. and Spiekermann, U. (eds), The Rise of Marketing and Market Research: Worlds of Consumption, [German Historical Society], NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 2
Historians of marketing have undertaken considerable investigation into the emergence of marketing practice, yet there is little agreement about when marketing first began.Enright, M., "Marketing and Conflicting Dates for its Emergence: Hotchkiss, Bartels, the ‘Fifties School’ and Alternative Accounts," Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 18, 2002, pp 445–461 Some researchers argue that marketing practices can be found in antiquityDixon, D.F., "Medieval Macromarketing Thought," In Macromarketing,George Fisk and Phillip White (eds), pp 59–69. Boulder, University of Colorado Press, 1980; Nevett, T., "Historical Investigation and the Practice of Marketing," Journal of Marketing, Vol. 55, No. 3, 1991, pp 13–24; Rahul Oka & Chapurukha M. Kusimba, "The Archaeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis," The Archaeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis," Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 16, pp 339–395; Bar-Yosef, O., "The Upper Paleolithic Revolution," Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 31, pp 363–393; Alberti, M. E., "Trade and Weighing Systems in the Southern Aegean from the Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age: How Changing Circuits Influenced Glocal Measures," in Molloy, B. (ed.), Of Odysseys and Oddities: Scales and Modes of Interaction Between Prehistoric Aegean Societies and their Neighbours, [Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology], Oxford, Oxbow, (E-Book), 2016; Berger, A., Marketing and American Consumer Culture: A Cultural Studies Analysis, Springer, 2016 while others suggest that marketing, in its modern form, emerged in conjunction with the rise of consumer culture in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe Southerton, D. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 2011 p. xxx while yet other researchers suggest that modern marketing was only fully realised in the decades following the Industrial Revolution in Britain from where it subsequently spread to Europe and North America.Hollander, S.C., Rassuli, K.M. Jones, G.D.B., and Dix, L.F., "Periodization in Marketing History," Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 25 No. 1, June 2005, p. 39, DOI: 10.1177/0276146705274982 Hollander and others have suggested that the different dates for the emergence of marketing can be explained by problems surrounding the way that marketing has been defined – whether reference to 'modern marketing' as a planned, programmed repertoire of professional practice including activities such as segmentation, product differentiation, positioning and marketing communications versus 'marketing' as a simple form of distribution and exchange.Enright, M., "Marketing and Conflicting Dates for its Emergence: Hotchkiss, Bartels, the ‘Fifties School’ and Alternative Accounts," Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 18, 2002, p. 454-55
Marketing in antiquity
Studies have found evidence of advertising, branding, packaging and labelling in antiquity.Maran, J. and Stockhammer, P.W. (eds), Materiality and Social Practice: Transformative Capacities of Intercultural Encounters, Oxford, UK, Oxbow, 2012Demirdjian, Z. S., "Rise and Fall of Marketing in Mesopotamia: A Conundrum in the Cradle of Civilization," In The Future of Marketing's Past: Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing, Leighton Neilson (ed.), CA, Longman, Association for Analysis and Research in Marketing, 2005 Umbricius Scauras, for example, was a manufacturer of fish sauce (also known as garum) in Pompeii, circa 35 B.C. Mosaic patterns in the atrium of his house were decorated with images of amphora bearing his personal brand and quality claims. The mosaic comprises four different amphora, one at each corner of the atrium, and bearing labels as follows: 1. G(ari) F(los) SCO[m]/ SCAURI/ EX OFFI[ci]/NA SCAU/RI Translated as "The flower of garum, made of the mackerel, a product of Scaurus, from the shop of Scaurus" 2. LIQU[minis]/ FLOS Translated as: "The flower of Liquamen" 3. G[ari] F[los] SCOM[bri]/ SCAURI Translated as: "The flower of garum, made of the mackerel, a product of Scaurus" 4. LIQUAMEN/ OPTIMUM/ EX OFFICI[n]/A SCAURI Translated as: "The best liquamen, from the shop of Scaurus"
Scauras' fish sauce had a high reputation, not only in the Pompeii region; a garum container bearing his name has been found at Fos-sur-mer in southern France. Curtis has described this mosaic as "an advertisement... and a rare, unequivocal example of a motif inspired by a patron, rather than by the artist."Curtis, R.I., "A Personalized Floor Mosaic from Pompeii," American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 88, No. 4, p. 557 In Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, archaeological evidence also points to evidence of branding and labelling in relatively common use. Wine jars, for example, were stamped with names, such as "Lassius" and "L. Eumachius;" probably references to the name of the producer. Carbonised loaves of bread, found at Herculaneum, indicate that some bakers stamped their bread with the producer's name.Beard, M., The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found, Harvard University Press, 2008; See Chapter 5, "Earning a Living: Baker, Banker and Garum Maker,"
David Wengrow has argued that branding became necessary following the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia in the 4th century BCE, when large-scale economies started mass-producing commodities such as alcoholic drinks, cosmetics and textiles. These ancient societies imposed strict forms of quality control over commodities, and also needed to convey value to the consumer through branding. Producers began by attaching simple stone seals to products which over time were transformed into clay seals bearing impressed images, often associated with the producer's personal identity thus giving the product a personality.Wengrow, D., "Prehistories of Commodity Branding," Current Anthropology,Vol. 49, No. 1, 2008, pp. 7–34
Diana Twede has argued that the "consumer packaging functions of protection, utility and communication have been necessary whenever packages were the object of transactions" (p. 107). She has shown that amphoras used in Mediterranean trade between 1500 and 500 BCE exhibited a wide variety of shapes and markings, which provided information for transactions. Systematic use of stamped labels dates from around the fourth century BCE. In a largely pre-literate society, the shape of the amphora and its pictorial markings conveyed information about the contents, region of origin and even the identity of the producer which were understood to convey information about product quality.Twede, D., "Commercial amphoras: The earliest consumer packages?" Journal of Macromarketing, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2002, pp 98–108 Not all historians agree that these markings can be compared with modern brands or labels. Moore and Reid, for example, have argued that the distinctive shapes and markings in ancient containers should be termed proto-brands rather than modern brands.Moore, K. and Reid., S., "The Birth of the Brand: 4000 Years of Branding," Business History, Vol. 50, 2008. p. 5; 23
Marketing in the Middle Ages
In England and continental Europe, market towns sprang up during the Middle Ages. Some analysts have suggested that the term 'marketing' may have first been used in the context of market towns, where it may have been used by producers to describe the process of carting and selling their produce and wares in market towns. Blintiff has investigated some early medieval networks of market towns, and suggests that by the 12th century there was an upsurge in the number of market towns, and an emergence of "merchant circuits" as traders bulked up surpluses from smaller regional, different day markets and resold them at the larger centralised market towns.Bintliff, J., "Going to Market in Antiquity," In Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur Historischen Geographie des Altertums, Eckart Olshausen and Holger Sonnabend (eds), Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 2002, p.224