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Marketing in Mexico: Sears, Roebuck Company, J. Walter Thompson, and the Culture of North American Commerce in Mexico City during the 1940s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Julio E. Moreno
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Extract

When the Sears, Roebuck Company opened its first store in Mexico City on February 28, 1947, an observer reported that the crowds on opening day were generally “well behaved, but impatient; they wanted to buy! buy! and buy!” Saleswomen panicked “as a sea of hands thrust pesos toward them, into their pockets, into their blouses, anywhere—just to complete a purchase.” Customers not only refused to leave at the end of the day; they stayed outside the store after closing. They jammed the street at night trying to look through the windows. On Saturday, two days after the store opened, Sears observers reported that customers outside the store screamed, “Let us in! Let us in! They waved money at us. They tried to sneak in through the back doors, and they cut the ropes guarding the entrance.” About 110,000 guests visited the store during its first three days of operation. So many customers visited Sears during its first two weeks in Mexico City that, according to John F. Gallagher, the vice-president of Sears' Latin American operations, “There were employees and lady customers who fainted due to the heat, agitation, and the crowdedness in the store.”

Type
Dissertation Summaries
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 683 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © Enterprise and Society 2000

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References

1. Jerry Jeran, toT.V., Houser, 2 March1947, International Operations Files, 100.15, box 52, Sears Archives,Hoffman Estates,Ill.Google Scholar

2. “Foreign Procedures,” p. 3, International Operations Files, 100.15F, box 1, Sears Archives.

3. Ibid.

4. “Latinoamerica: Oportunidades y Responsabilidades2014discurso pronunciadopor Gallagher, John F.—Vice presidente acargo de Latinoamerica,” Chicago, 9 Dec.1960, International Operations Files, 100.15, box 49, Sears Archives.Google Scholar

5. “Foreign Procedures” p 3.

6. James, Daniel,“Sears, Roebuck's Mexican Revolution” Harper's Magazine (June1959), 103, copy in International Operations Files, box 48, Sears Archives.Google Scholar

7. A similar article in theSaturday Evening Post reported that the “consumer revolution” Sears had introduced in the 1940s had done a more effective job than the U.S. government in raising the standard of living and creating social and political stability in Latin America. See “Yankees Don't Go Home”Saturday Evening Post, copy in International Operations Files, 100.15F, folder “Foreign Procedures” box 1, Sears Archives.

8. Ibid.

9. My chapter, “Prophets of Wealth, Agents of Progress: Mexican Advertisers Make Way for Modern Industrial Capitalism” concerns the growth of advertising as a profession in Mexico. I argue that Mexican advertising agents utilized American advertising business practices and organizations such as the American Advertising Association (AAA) as a model and as a mechanism for legitimizing their work as a profession.

10. Scholars of Mexican history agree that the social and political upheaval during the military phase of the Mexican Revolution triggered revolutionary and nationalist processes expressed through institutional reforms, as well as social and cultural reform. See Camín, Hèctor Aguilar andMeyer, Lorenzo, Inthe Shadow of the Mexican Revolution: Contemporary Mexican History, 1910–1989, trans.Fierro, Luis A. (Austin, Texas,1993)Google Scholar; Knight, Alan,The Mexican Revolution: Counter-Revolution and Reconstruction (Lincoln, Nebr.,1986),2Google Scholar; and “Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People: Mexico, 1910–40” in The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880–1940, ed.Jaime, Rodriguez (Los Angeles,1990)Google Scholar; Krauze, Enrique,La Precidencia Imperial: Ascenso y Caida del Sistema Político Mexicano, 1940–1996 (Mèxico,1997)Google Scholar; Smith, Peter, “Mexico since 1946: Dynamics of an Authoritarian Regime” inMexico since Independence, ed.Leslie, Bethell (Cambridge, England,1990),321–96Google Scholar; and Roderic Camp, Entrepreneursand Politics in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Oxford,1989).Google Scholar

11. Sears started in the United States as a mail-order merchandise retailer in the late nineteenth century, but its rapid expansion of urban department stores in the 1920s and 1930s made Sears one of America's leading middle-class retailers by the 1930s. See Sears Publication Department,Merchant to the Millions: A Brief History of the Origins and Development of Sears, Roebuck Company (Chicago,1950s)Google Scholar.

12. The concept of a “middle ground” is different from Florencia Mallon's definition of hegemony. Mallon defines hegemony as “a set of nested, continuous processes through which power and meaning are contested, legitimized, and redefined at all levels of society.” She also defines it as “an actual end point, the result of a hegemonic process [and] as a dynamic or precarious balance, a ontract or agreement” reached among contesting forces. SeeMallon,Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, Calif.,1995),6Google Scholar. The middle ground is not an end point or the result of a hegemonic process. It is rather a process of learning the boundaries of what it takes to do business successfully or to design images that blend2014or rather, syncretize—values, beliefs, and practices. The “syncretizing” of images may be a conscious effort on the part of advertisers, broadcasters, or editors, but the audience does not necessarily perceive this consciously.Neither is there a guarantee that images will have the results, expectations, or impact originally intended. The “middle ground” concept does not necessarily imply that there is a political or economic message that will create either a true or a false consciousness. However, it translates an experience within boundaries that the viewer can consciously accept. It signifies the learning by advertisers of what the boundaries are for making images, messages, values, and rhetoric acceptable within a specific context.

13. See my dissertation chapter, “Syncretizing Mexican and American Values, Negotiating a Middle Ground and the Opening ofThompson, J. W. inMexico.”Google Scholar

14. See my dissertation chapter, “Spreading the American Dream, Modernizing Mexico: Information, Technology, and World War II,”; for a full account of the role of World War II in 1940s Mexico.Google Scholar

15. Villegas, DanielCosío, “La Crisis de Mèxico,” inEnsayo y Notas I (Mèxico,1966),143–44.Google Scholar

16. By “dialogue,” I am referring to the exchange or discussion of ideas among Mexicans or between Mexicans and Americans through the print media.

17. One of the main historical interpretations of post-revolutionary Mexico suggests that Mexico's revolutionary process had ended and had become “hollow rhetoric” by the late 1940s as a result of more politically conservative political leaders and policies that encouraged modern industrial capitalism. It suggests that Mexico's revolutionary ideals declined in the 1940s as American companies and culture flooded the Mexican market, and that leaders gradually undermined Mexico's revolution. See Monsiváis, Carlos,Mexican Postcards (London,1997),18Google Scholar; Monsiváis, , “La Cultura Mexicana en el Siglo XX,”Contemporary Mexico, ed.James, Wilkie,Michel, Meyer, andEdna Monzón de, Wilkie (Berkeley, Calif.,1976),634–70Google Scholar; Agustín, Josè,Tragicomedia Mexicana: La Vida en Mèxico de 1940 a 1970, tomo. 1 (Mèxico,1990)Google Scholar; Hamilton, Nora,The Limits of State Autonomy (Princeton, N.J.,1982)Google Scholar; Camín, andMeyer, ,In the Shadow of the Mexican Revolution; Knight, “Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People”Google Scholar; and Villegas, Cosío,“La Crisis de Mèxico,” 143–44Google Scholar.

18. In my chapter on “Advertising and the Reconstruction of Modern Mexico,” I show how the systematic use of advertising images constructed commercial narratives that consistently linked these ideals to consumption.

19. Novo, Salvador Nueva Grandesa Mexicana (Buenos Aires,1947),11.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 12, 13.

21. Ibid., 84, 128.

22. “La Riqueza Legendaria de Mèxico” (febrero de 1947), in Ensayos y Notas I (Mèxico,1966),52.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 64.