Book ID: CBB613870758

Engineered to Sell: European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism (2019)

unapi

Logemann, Jan (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: vii + 371
Language: English

Forever immortalized in the television series Mad Men, the mid-twentieth century marketing world influenced nearly every aspect of American culture - music, literature, politics, economics, consumerism, race relations, gender, and more. Jan Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research and commercial design who transformed capitalism, from the 1930s through the 1960s. He argues that the history of marketing consumer goods is not a story of American exceptionalism. Instead, the careers of immigrants point to the limits of the "Americanization" paradigm. First, Logemann explains the rise of a dynamic world of goods by emphasizing changes in marketing approaches increasingly tailored to consumers. Second, he looks at how and why consumer engineering was shaped by transatlantic exchanges. From Austrian psychologists and little-known social scientists to the illustrious Bauhaus artists, the migr s at the center of this story illustrate the vibrant cultural and commercial connections between metropolitan centers: Vienna and New York; Paris and Chicago; Berlin and San Francisco. These mid-century consumer engineers crossed national and disciplinary boundaries not only within arts and academia but also between governments, corporate actors, and social reform movements. By focusing on the transnational lives of migr consumer researchers, marketers, and designers, Engineered to Sell details the processes of cultural translation and adaptation that mark both the mid-century transformation of American marketing and the subsequent European shift to 'American' consumer capitalism. (Publisher)

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Reviewed By

Review Dario Gaggio (Summer 2021) Review of "Engineered to Sell: European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism". Business History Review (pp. 364-366). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB613870758/

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Authors & Contributors
James P. Woodard
Jennifer A. Delton
Bui, Keva X.
Berghoff, Hartmut
Remus, Emily
Suzuki, Erin
Concepts
Capitalism
Consumers
Consumption (Economics)
Business history
Marketing
Middle class
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
Mexico
Pacific Northwest (North America)
Latin America
Germany
Europe
Institutions
National Association of Manufacturers
American Medical Association
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