Anne Cronin, University of Lancaster, 'Spaces, Consumers and Markets: Knowledge Practices of the Outdoor Advertising Industry’

E-mail: a.cronin@lancaster.ac.uk

This paper is based on ethnographic data generated from a project on contemporary UK city spaces and outdoor advertising. The project explores the market research practices of outdoor advertising companies (media owners of advertising space), examining the generation and circulation of understandings of urban spaces and people in those spaces through specific forms of commercial research and advertising ‘folk knowledges’. In the presentation, I put particular emphasis on how these knowledges are practised, circulated, assessed and deployed, and how the advertising industry creates or performs certain market relationships through these knowledge practices. In turn, these commercial knowledge practices enact particular configurations of urban space and the encounters between people and commercial architecture in that space; in effect, they function to perform the city.

David Humphrey, Royal College of Art, ‘With an all seeing eye’: The role of middlemen in the Northern European Goldsmithing Trade, c.1400-c.1477

E-mail: david.humphrey@rca.ac.uk

The period between c.1400 and c.1477 saw a massive expansion in the nature of, and demands on, the goldsmithing trade in Northern Europe. The royal and ducal courts nominally based in Paris, Brussels, Bruges and London demanded forever greater quantities of work which in turn fuelled an almost constant upward level of demand for precious metal and precious stones. To meet those demands a class of middlemen rapidly developed with access to, and influence in, specific materials markets. With their specialist knowledge and market contacts they were able to source materials from around the known world. Many of these middlemen became fantastically wealthy and key players in the political and financial worlds of the various courts. This paper examines the rise of these middlemen during the period and their often complex roles within both the courts themselves and within the goldsmithing trade. Although primary focus will be on the French and Valois Burgundian courts, linkage will be made with the English and other Northern Europe markets.

Marina Moskowitz, University of Glasgow, 'Dissemination: Horticultural Knowledge and the Selling of Seeds in Nineteenth-Century America'

E-mail: mam@arts.gla.ac.uk

The booming seed trade of the American nineteenth-century had two intertwined missions: to sell as many seeds as they could obtain to the broadest possible market, and to create that market through consumer education in horticulture. While all nineteenth-century business drew on the rapid rise of print technology, there seems to have been a special relationship between the seed trade and print culture. Several early American seed sellers had been trained as printers and by the end of the century, seed houses often had on-site printing works that rivalled small publishing houses. This print was employed to educate consumers through a variety of media: the wonderfully instructive genre of seed catalogues, as well as numerous gardening manuals and horticultural journals authored and/or published my members of the trade. The instruction ranged from the basics of botany, to advice for sowing and maintaining gardens of all sorts, to elaborate plans and designs for farms and gardens. The advice comprised both text and vibrant visual imagery. Clearly believing than an educated consumer was the best market for their wares, the seed trade was a major force in horticultural education.

Diana Russell, Bath Spa University, Business Women and Advertising in Bath c1795-1830

E-mail: DIANARUSSELL9@aol.com

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have been described as a period in which women’s work was becoming marginalised. However, recent studies undertaken have shown that this was not the case and that women in business were visibly present in the economic arena in towns throughout Britain. This paper will explore the ways in which women in business in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Bath used the medium of advertising as a means of communication. Advertisements were a very visible means through which women in business communicated with the existing and potential patrons. Advertisements appeared in the provincial newspapers servicing Bath and its surrounding areas, as well as in the Bath Directories.  They were used to communicate significant quantities of information to the public, both tangible and intangible. Not only did they advertise practical information such as the wares and services that business women were offering, changes of address but they, also, conveyed ideas of politeness and respectability. The advertisements placed by women were composed along similar lines as their male counterparts thus suggesting that they were willing to enter the business world on the same terms as men.

Peter Scott, University of Reading and James Walker, University of Reading, The `managerial revolution’ in department store retailing: An Anglo-American comparison

E-mail: p.m.scott@rdg.ac.uk

E-mail: j.t.walker@rdg.ac.uk

British retailing has often been characterised as having lower productivity, less developed managerial hierarchies and methods, and poorer economies of scale and scope than its U.S. counterpart during the early twentieth century.  This has, in turn, been linked to the slower diffusion of a variety of managerial and accounting innovations, collectively termed the `managerial revolution’ in department store retailing. However, such comparisons are generally made using crude and indirect proxies for British retailing efficiency. This paper draws on much better data for US and UK department stores – major annual surveys conducted by the Harvard Bureau of Business Research and the London School of Economics. The surveys show that, contrary to received wisdom, British department stores achieved superior performance than American stores in terms of gross and net margins, operating profits, and stock-turn. American stores had poorer labour productivity, but this was more than compensated for by their superior capital productivity. The paper seeks to examine the reasons behind Britain’s surprisingly strong performance, drawing on both the published surveys and a database of surviving returns from the UK survey – covering some 115 stores. It concludes that America’s poorer productivity performance stemmed not from differences in managerial methods per se, but from a high advertising and promotion cost, high services cost, high premises cost, competitive equilibrium, which U.S. department stores had become locked into during the 1920s (and from which they could not extricate themselves in the aftermath of the depression).

Jon Stobart, University of Northampton, 'Selling (through) Politeness: Advertising Provincial Shops in the Eighteenth Century

E-mail: jon.stobart@northampton.ac.uk

Advertising became increasingly prominent and sophisticated during the eighteenth century, with the spread of several innovatory forms, including newspaper notices and trade cards. Advertisements, in their various forms, have been drawn upon to examine selling practices, recreate shop interiors, and representations of retail space (Cox, 2000; Walsh, 2003?; Morgan, 2006). However, notwithstanding  pioneering work of McKendrick on George Packwood (1982) and Berg and Clifford’s more recent (2004?) assessment of trade cards, many aspects of their construction, language and imagery have yet to be explored in detail.

This paper examines one particular dimension of eighteenth-century advertisements: the way in which they communicated (through) notions of politeness. It offers an overview of newspaper advertisements and trade cards from across the Midlands and north-west England. These indicate the extent of and ways in which politeness influenced provincial advertising. Building on this, a more detailed reading of a small sample of advertisements provides insights into some of the mechanisms through which politeness was mobilised. The paper argues that advertisements were structured by and drew upon the conventions, norms and language of politeness to sell goods and promote shops. At the same time – and through the same devices – they helped to reproduce and communicate these ideas to a wider public.

The workshop will be held at the University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton city campus, Millennium City Building. Welcome and lunch will take place between 12.00 and 13.00 in Room MA132 (the Board Room). Please make your way to the Main Reception in MA building ('the Marble'), and they will direct you to the room. The workshop will take place in Room MA 133. 

Maps are available at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=6856

The workshop fee is £ 12. Please make cheques payable to 'the University of Wolverhampton' and send with a completed registration form to the address below. Credit card payments are also accepted. For further details, or to request an invoice, please contact the address below.

Registration forms can be down-loaded from here

The venue is situated in Wolverhampton’s city centre, and is readily accessible by road and by public transport. The railway and bus stations are only five/ten minutes’ walk away (Maps and further information will be sent out to participants c. 2 weeks before the event).

Directions can also be found on-line, at http://www.wlv.ac.uk/default.aspx?page=6856

More general information about Wolverhampton, including maps and details of local accommodation can be found on-line, via the Wolverhampton Tourist Information Centre. Tel: 01902 556110 Fax: 01902 556111
E-mail: wolverhampton.tic@dial.pipex.com
The web address is:
http://www.wolverhampton.tic.dial.pipex.com/tic/home.shtml

For further information, please contact: Dr Laura Ugolini, HAGRI / HLSS, Room MC233, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1SB, UK. 
E-mail: l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk  Tel.: 01902 321890.