Volume 59 (2014), Edition 2

This paper reviews the available evidence on the history of travelling salesmen in France and offers more general hypotheses about the role of this profession in the «Great Transformation». Based on literary evidence as well as diverse archival...

«Customers are no inheritance but must be earned»:Commercial travellers in modern practical guide literature,1880 to 1960 In the 19th and 20th centuries, practical guides played a significant role both in providing knowledge and in shaping the...

In analysing the development of «modern marketing», business historians have focused on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States and Europe. This paper reviews the debates about the sources and timing of key changes...

Expert or Scapegoat? The Pharmaceutical Salesmen as Marketing Instrument in the 20th Century Around 1900 German pharmaceutical companies began to hire so called «doctor visitors» (Ärztebesucher), who quickly became an indispensable element of...

Five decades of Stiftung Warentest – the history of a test institution seen in light of the economic restraints and political ideas The «Stiftung Warentest» was constructed as a hybrid between a corporation in the field of consumer information...