ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the marketing practices in Britain's food and health drinks firms between 1930 and 1970. For the important segment of the British economy, its finding has been to cast doubt on the apparently widespread view that the country's marketing efforts were of indifferent quality. Michael Porter has confirmed that 'the largest concentration of British competitive advantage is in consumer packaged goods, including alcoholic beverages food such as confectionery products and biscuits'. Among the internationally competitive UK industries in 1985, he noted breakfast cereals, nonchocolate sugar candy, chocolate and products, pastry, biscuits, cakes, jams and marmalades. To investigate, as systematically as possible, the question of which food and health drink firms in the 1930s employed good marketing practices, and which the opposite, advertising data for 1935. These were compiled, for a range of product groups, from that year's Census of Production and from an associated industry-wide inquiry into advertising expenditure.
