ABSTRACT
One of the centers of influence on the development of marketing thought was the University of Wisconsin. As Robert Bartels explained, Wisconsin, at the turn of the century, was the residence of such economists as William A. Scott, John R. Commons, Richard T. Ely, and Henry Charles Taylor. The emergence of the marketing discipline in the inflexion it received at Wisconsin is therefore a function of multiple historical contingencies. This chapter traces the origins of teaching and research in marketing at Wisconsin. They began in the School of Economics and included the Course in Commerce and the Department of Agriculture, both of which evolved from the former. Among the students in economics at Wisconsin were David Kinley, Edward David Jones, Samuel E. Sparling, James E. Hagerty, M. B. Hammond, Henry Charles Taylor, and Benjamin H. Hibbard. Classical economics was highly abstract and deductive. The German Historical School of Economics is more empirical and inductively oriented.
