The Foundations of Marketing Practice

Between 1815 and 1890, the German book market experienced phenomenal growth, driven by German publishers’ dynamic entrepreneurial attitude towards developing and distributing books. Embracing aggressive marketing on a large scale, they developed a growing sense of what their markets wanted. This study, based almost entirely upon primary sources including over seventy years of trade newspapers, is an in depth account of how and why this market developed—decades before there was any written theory about marketing.

This book is therefore about both marketing practice and marketing theory. It provides a uniquely well-researched account of how markets were developed in very sophisticated ways long before there was a formal discipline of marketing: for example, German publishers used segmentation at least 150 years before the first US articles on the subject appeared. Much of their experience was also shared by the UK and US book markets through international interactions between booksellers and other businessmen.

All scholars of marketing will find this historical account a fascinating insight into markets and marketing, This will also be of interest to social historians, scholars of German history, book trade and book trade historians.