Stanley C. Hollander

Periodization in Marketing History

This article explores some of the purposes, advantages, problems, and limitations of periodizing marketing history and the history of marketing thought. A sample of twenty-eight well-known periodizations taken from marketing history, the history of marketing thought, and business history is used to illustrate these themes. The article concludes with recommendations about how to periodize historical research in marketing.

An assessment of direct farm‐to‐table food marketing in the USA

The authors examine issues related to farm‐to‐table direct marketing. We consider motivations and drawbacks associated with participating in farm‐to‐table from both the consumer and farmer perspectives. While we find a significant amount of advocacy for the restoration of nostalgic methods of food distribution that remove all intermediaries from direct farmer‐consumer interaction, we conclude that farm‐to‐table direct marketing plays, and is likely to continue to play, a very minor role in US food distribution.

Sumptuary Legislation: Demarketing by Edict

Sumptuary legislation, or governmental control over consumption, is better known to historians of the Middle Ages than to modern marketing scholars. Yet, such legislation (and related semi-formal codes) exists in varying degree and in many guises in all countries today and the potentialities for increase also warrant attention. The legislation is considered here in terms of enforceability and of price, distributional, and allocative effects.

Retailers as creatures and creators of the social order

Asserts that the goods which retailers sell and the way in which they sell them impact significantly on the cultural fabric and pattern of civil life. Provides perspectives from both the past and current retail environment. Considers various methods by which retail distributors make interventions in the social life of communities. Concludes that there is a need for those who study retailing to move beyond such aspects as immediate profit maximization to embrace the concepts of macro retailing and thus achieve a greater understanding of the retail environment.

Revolving, Not Revolutionary Books: The History of Rental Libraries until 1960:

Small rental libraries that circulated popular fiction and nonfiction for a small fee flourished as sideline businesses in many U.S. and British nonbook retail and service outlets from the late 1920s through the 1940s. Publisher’s Weekly estimated that there were 50,000 of these so-called drugstore libraries in the United States alone in 1935. This article explores the antecedents, history, operation, and influence of those libraries. It then considers this one subindustry’s implications for such marketing concepts as theories of retail firm growth and decline, the vagueness of the distinction between products and services, loss-leader and scrambled merchandising, and relationship marketing. The overall picture is one of very considerable flexibility in both private- and ultimately public-sector response to changing consumer needs and desires.

Balkanization of America: Lessons from the Interstate Trade Barrier Experience

Interstate trade barriers—laws, regulations, and administrative practices that hamper the flow of goods and services from state to state—have been persistent elements of the U. S. economy. This article pursues some implications of the U.S. experience for the European Community and for macromarketing and managerial practice, theory, and policy.

Retail diversification in the USA: Are there performance benefits?

Abstract More research has been called for to explore the relative benefits of retail diversification. The current paper isolates two groups of US retailers: firms that became less diversified during a five-year period, and firms that maintained a level of diversification during the same five years. Using improved methodologies, analysis shows that most firms benefit from a strategy of less diversification, while (concurrently and counter-intuitively) many firms that stayed diversified outperformed industry average operating profits-to-sales ratios.

My life on Mt Olympus

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to recount Stanley C. Hollanders own educational experiences and career paths. This is a reprint (with permission) of Stanley C. Hollanders article which first appeared in the Journal of Macromarketing in 1995.Design/methodology/approach – An autobiographical description of the authors early years.Findings – The paper reveals many of Stanley C. Hollanders personal thoughts, reflections and some regrets.Originality/value – The paper provides valuable personal insights from the late Stanley C. Hollander.

Distinguished retrospective viewpoint: study retailing and see the world?

The motivations behind Multinational Retailing were probably a combination of the author’s wanderlust and his perception of a gap in the retailing textbook literature. Research support emanated from complex circumstances. Thirty years later, more personnel‐oriented research and more study of the global retailer in a world of changing nation‐states are still needed.

Some Ethical Questions in Teaching Marketing and Retailing

A large number of ethical questions arise when teaching marketing and retailing. Subject matter or content questions concern employer-employee, business-business, and business-society relationships. Course and program administration questions mainly relate to relationships between academic institutions and business, and between. such institutions and their students. In this article, a number of these problems are considered and then a partial problem-solving approach is outlined.