The historical approach to marketing and consumption: Contributions and research programmes

Abstract

The historical approach is too rarely used in our discipline, while it offers many advantages for marketing and consumer research. In particular, the historical approach offers the following contributions: (1) to grasp the density and discontinuities of consumption phenomena, which is necessary for the mobilisation of certain theoretical perspectives; (2) to challenge new theoretical proposals and instituted chronologies and (3) to feed managerial thought through the historicising of marketing and consumption issues and strategies. Based on these reflections and a review of the work in our discipline, we propose research programmes that deserve to be developed and enriched by the historical approach.