ABSTRACT
One of the principal values of Professor Tedlow’s analysis of mass marketing is that it attempts to conceptualize a sequential model against which national and international experiences may be compared. While the evidence he adduces derives from the history of firms, the phases which he identifies refer to market development in which external, economic and social environmental factors are as important as firm-specific strategies. He describes the evolution of marketing in the United States as having occurred in three phases. The first was characterized by market fragmentation: a multiplicity of product brands in virtually all markets in which manufacturers sought profitability through high prices and low volume sales. The second phase saw the emergence of a national market in which by about 1900 many national brands, produced and sold in high volumes at low prices, enabled a small group of companies, or a single aggressive company in some instances, to emerge from competition as dominant national market leaders. In the third phase a complex form of market fragmentation developed, differing from that of the pre-1900 period inasmuch that segmentation was not the outcome of imperfections in the market resulting from geographical and transport factors but was the effect of companies’ marketing strategies intended to identify and develop market niches based on income, age, education and lifestyle (Tedlow 1990: 3–8).
