ABSTRACT
When massive amounts of literature related to marketing emerged in the USA around the turn of the twentieth century, managerial or micromarketing literature existed from the beginning. This chapter explores Ralph Starr Butler's management thinking and the historical background that encouraged him to formulate it. To establish the managerial idea of marketing it was essential to embrace the function of product policy, distinguishing it from sales management. While Bucklin considers that Butler's discussion was the first serious effort to define the marketing channel, his historical contribution to this discussion was also remarkable. Private brands or the 'substitutes' for the national brands were everywhere in Butler's time. Butler indicated that the shortest channel enabled the manufacturer to have 'absolute control of his market' and 'no problem of price-cutting, substitution, the manufacturer must have faced 'the greatest expense of direct selling' and 'the antagonism of dealers' at the same time.
