ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on importance of design in the marketing activities of manufacturers and merchants. It suggests, rather, that it was in the first half of the nineteenth century that society was more structurally organized to maintain the development of consumerism and the establishment of a close link between merchant and manufacturer. The chapter does not attempt to get to the root of the chronological problem. The Journal of Design, for example, was firmly with Thomson when it stated: This novelty fever, or to use Joan Thirsk's words 'the tyranny of fashion' prevailed, according to many witnesses, mainly in foreign markets. It is appropriate here, however, to stress that the intrinsic value of 'novelty' was promoted rather by manufacturers and merchants than by customers. It briefs at the development of merchandising in both the woollen textile and cotton industries it is clear that, by the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the merchant class became powerful enough to direct marketing.
