Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T17:43:52.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Slowly Becoming Sales Promotion Men?”: Negotiating the Career of the Sales Representative in Britain, 1920s–1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2015

MIKE FRENCH
MIKE FRENCH*
Affiliation:
Mike French is a professor of economic and social history at the University of Glasgow. His research and publications have centered on British and U.S. business history, including studies of tire manufacturing, food regulation, and the careers and images of commercial travelers. Contact information: Lilybank House, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The commercial traveler, or traveling salesman, was an agent of commercialism and modernization as well as a stock character in British popular culture. To C. Wright Mills, salesmen faced particularly challenging demands to conform to managerial direction. This article examines how British salesmen negotiated their occupational identity during the twentieth century. Developments in marketing, corporate growth, and periods of war and recession all challenged salesmen’s status and autonomy. These influences prompted a lengthy and recurring debate about how best to present, defend, and justify their work and identity. New marketing techniques and management systems evolved steadily, rather than producing sudden or uniform changes in the ways in which salesmen worked. Their culture of enterprise and individualism persisted, in part as it was shared by employers and managers. The impact of new marketing methods proved greatest in confectionery, tobacco, and other consumer goods trades as sales of branded, packaged goods expanded. Even then, salesmen contributed to shaping their work and occupational identity, proving unable to establish professional credentials and dividing over whether adopting trade union methods could improve their position.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 39 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Benson, John and Ugolini, Laura, eds. Cultures of Selling: Perspectives on Consumption and Society since 1700. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006.Google Scholar
Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Bledstein, Burton J. The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. New York: Norton, 1976.Google Scholar
Bledstein, Burton J. and Johnston, Robert D., eds. The Middling Sort: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class. New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degredation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Joseph. The Whistling Commercial. London: Smart and Allen, 1877.Google Scholar
DuGay, Paul. Consumption and Identity at Work. London: Sage, 1996.Google Scholar
Feinstein, Charles H. National Income, Expenditure and Output of the UK, 1855–1965; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Robert. Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 1862–1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Friedman, Walter. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Gamble, Andrew. The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1994.Google Scholar
Gourvish, Terence R. and Tiratsoo, Nick, eds. Missionaries and Managers: American Influence on European Management Education, 1945–60. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. The Managed Heart. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Jackson, Peter, et al., eds. Commercial Cultures: Economies, Practices and Space. Oxford: Berg, 2000.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Clive and Sherman, Barrie. White-Collar Unionism: The Rebellious Salariat. London: Routledge and Kean Paul, 1979.Google Scholar
Jones, Geoffrey and Zeitlin, Jonathan, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Business History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Laird, Pamela Walker. Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Roy and Maude, Angus. The English Middle Classes. London: Phoenix House, 1949.Google Scholar
McKibbin, Ross. Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. White Collar: The American Middle-Classes. London: Oxford University Press, 1951.Google Scholar
Milne, Seamus. The Enemy Within: The Secret War against the Miners, 4th ed. London: Verso, 2014.Google Scholar
National Industrial Conference Board (NICB). Salesmen’s Turnover in Early Employment. New York: NICB, 1972.Google Scholar
National Industrial Conference Board (NICB). Incentive Plans for Salesmen. New York: NICB, 1970.Google Scholar
Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin, 1937.Google Scholar
Perkin, Harold. The rise of Professional Society: England since 1880. London: Routledge, 1989.Google Scholar
Phillips, Jim. Collieries, Communities and the Miners’ Strike in Scotland, 1984–1985. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Savage, Mike. Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Schwarzkopf, Stephan and Gries, Ernest, eds. Ernest Dichter and Motivation Research: New Perspectives on the Making of Post-War Consumer Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar
Spears, Timothy. One Hundred Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Winterton, Jonathan and Winterton, Ruth. Coal, Crisis and Conflict: The Miners’ Strike in Yorkshire. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.Google Scholar

Articles and Book Chapters

Bailey, Peter. “Parasexuality and Glamour: The Victorian Barmaid as Cultural Prototype.” Gender and History 2 (1990): 148–172.Google Scholar
Church, Roy. “Salesmen and the Transformation of Selling in Britain and the United States in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Economic History Review 61, no. 3 (2008): 695–725.Google Scholar
Corley, Tony. “Consumer Marketing in Britain, 1914–1960.” Business History 29 (1987): 65–83.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Robert. “Products, Firms and Consumption: Cadbury and the Development of Marketing, 1900–1939.” Business History 47, no. 4 (2005): 511–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Robert. “Marketing and Distribution.” In The Oxford Handbook of Business History, edited by Jones, Geoffrey and Zeitlin, Jonathan, 396–419. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
French, Michael. “From Commercial Traveller to Sales Representatives: The Evolution of the Sales Profession in Britain, 1930s to 1960s.” Zeitschrift fur Unternehmensgeschichtez 59, no. 2 (2014): 179–195.Google Scholar
French, Michael. “Commercials, Careers and Cultures: Traveling Salesmen in Britain, 1890s–1930s.” Economic History Review 58, no. (2005): 269–282.Google Scholar
French, Michael and Popp, Andrew. “‘Ambassadors of Commerce’: The Commercial Traveler in British Culture, 1800–1939.” Business History Review 82 (2008): 789–814.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
French, Mike. “On the Road: Traveling Salesmen and Experiences of Mobility in Britain before 1939.” Journal of Transport History 31, no. 2 (2010): 133–150.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis. “The Organisational Synthesis in American History.” Business History Review 44, no. 3 (1970): 272–290.Google Scholar
Hosgood, Christopher P. “The ‘Language of Business’: Shopkeepers and the Business Community in Victorian England.” Victorian Review 17, no. 1 (1991): 35–50.Google Scholar
Hosgood, Christopher P. “‘The Knights of the Road’: Commercial Travellers and the Culture of the Commercial Room in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England.” Victorian Studies 37 (1994): 514–548.Google Scholar
Melling, Joseph. “Managing the White-Collar Union: Salaried Staff, Trade Union Leadership, and the Politics of Organised Labour in Postwar Britain, c1950–1968.” International Review of Social History 48 (2003): 245–271.Google Scholar
Melling, Joseph. “Leading the White-Collar Union: Clive Jenkins, the Management of Trade-Union Officers, and the Politics of the British Labour Movement, c1968–1979.” International Review of Social History 49 (2004): 71–102.Google Scholar
Mercer, Helen. “Retailer-Supplier Relationships before and after the Resale Prices Act, 1964: A Turning Point in British Economic History?”, Enterprise & Society 15, no. 1 (2014): 132–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Gareth, et al. “The Evolving Culture of Retailer Regulation and the Failure of the ‘Balfour Bill’ in Interwar Britain.” Environment and Planning A 32, no. 11 (2000): 1977–1989.Google Scholar
Scott, Peter. “Managing Door-to-Door Salesmen in Interwar Britain.” Business History Review 82, no. 4 (2008): 761–788.Google Scholar
Trainor, R. H. “The Middle Class.” In The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume III, 1840–1950, edited by Daunton, Martin, 673–714. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Wrigley, Chris. “From ASSET to ASTMS: An Example of White-Collar Union Growth in the 1960s.” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 7 (1999): 55–74.Google Scholar

Periodicals

Confectionery News, 1960–1961Google Scholar
Confectionery and Tobacco News, 1963Google Scholar
On the Road, 1920–1966Google Scholar
Selling Today, 1967–1976Google Scholar
The British Salesman, 1960Google Scholar
The Confectioners’ Union, 1921–1955Google Scholar
The Drapers’ Record, 1926–1935Google Scholar
The Scottish Commercial Traveller, 1968–1976Google Scholar

Archival and Other Sources

Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, Rowntree & Co archives.Google Scholar
Census, 1951, Scotland, volume IV, Occupations and Industries, Edinburgh, 1956.Google Scholar
Committee on Trade and Industry, Minutes of Evidence, 1924–1927, volume III (London, 1927), p. 1506.Google Scholar
Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware, Dichter Papers.Google Scholar
Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield, MNMW, Records of M and J Wing Ltd.Google Scholar
Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS79, United Commercial Travellers’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland.Google Scholar
Mondelez International, Bournville, Cadbury’s Archives.Google Scholar
Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford, D5189, Evode Ltd records.Google Scholar
Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle, AS/CT1 UKCTA Newcastle branch.Google Scholar
University of Edinburgh Library, Centre for Research Collections, Papers of Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.Google Scholar
West Yorkshire Archive Services, Bradford, MSS71, UCTA Bradford branch records.Google Scholar