Selling the consumer: the marketing of advertising space in Sweden, ca. 1880-1939
Journal of Historical Research in Marketing
ISSN: 1755-750X
Article publication date: 5 July 2019
Issue publication date: 12 July 2019
Abstract
Purpose
By studying the marketing of advertising space, this paper aims to study how class, gender and region were portrayed in terms of economic considerations in adverts selling advertising space to potential advertisers. The paper studies how readers were discursively transformed into consumers in this material and how different consumer groups were depicted, divided and framed during Sweden’s early consumer culture. By doing so, the paper highlights the tensions between aiming at a mass audience, on the one hand, and striving to reach more and more specific consumer groups on the other hand.
Design/methodology/approach
Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are made in order to follow the changes of highlighted consumer groups in the ads. Intersectional analysis is used to see how notions of class and gender intersected during the analysed period.
Findings
The sectioning of the press is in the paper stressed as a prerequisite for market segmentation and the economic history of mass media is lifted as essential for understanding it. The gendering and classing of market segments were also based on how common interests were interpreted by political movements and their press forums. For surviving in the long run, however, the paper argues that the political press needed to commercialise their readerships to attract advertisers and survive economically.
Originality/value
The paper concludes that mass marketing and segmentation processes were in many senses parallel in the studied material. Statements of reaching all social classes diminished over time, but notions of the masses were prevalent in both the worker and the women categories. However, how advertisers choose between different media for their advertising campaigns or how they adopted different marketing methods towards different segments are beyond the scope of this paper.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author wants to thank Dorothy Sue Cobble, Elin Gardeström, Leif Runefelt and Zeynep Çolpan as well as two anonymous reviewers for critical readings and useful comments during the writing process. Any remaining errors and shortcomings are as always my own. A special thank you also to Jackson J.T. Lears and the History department at Rutgers University where the first embryo of this text was created.
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) [grant number dnr 2011-0496].
Citation
Arnberg, K. (2019), "Selling the consumer: the marketing of advertising space in Sweden, ca. 1880-1939", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 142-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHRM-10-2017-0062
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited