Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market

by Susan Strasser

This sweeping history provides the reader with a better understanding of America’s consumer society, obsession with shopping, and devotion to brands. Focusing on the advertising campaigns of Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Wrigley’s, Gillette, and Kodak, Strasser shows how companies created both national brands and national markets. These new brands eventually displaced generic manufacturers and created a new desire for brand-name goods. The book also details the rise and development of department stores such as Macy’s, grocery store chains such as A&P and Piggly Wiggly, and mail-order companies like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Business, Sociology, American History

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

America was born of the frontier, its citizens people who by necessity often manufactured their own household requirements. This was the case throughout most of the 19th century: even in cities where people could purchase articles like candles and clothing. But by that century’s end, a revolution was in the process – a consumer revolution in which virtually every household good, from food to cleaning solutions, came from factories. Even more remarkably, however, those goods weren’t even coming from the factories through familiar faces at local groceries: they were entering the lives of people through new mail-order schemes and colossal supermarkets. Satisfaction Guaranteed examines how a few entrepreneurs transformed Americans’ lifestyles and marketplace.
Like Never Done and Waste and Want, Satisfaction is chiefly focused on social history, and together the three examine various facets of Americans’ transformation from producers to consumers, of how a nation of nominally self-reliant farmers and merchants became one of employee-consumers and big business. Unlike her previous workers, however, here Strasser presents a critical business history, rather like Straight Out of the Oven or Cheap. To explain the success of the new businesses, she demonstrates to readers how they created completely new business and marketing practices, like ‘market segmentation’ – targeting particular products within a brand to specific demographics. Another novelty was that of the brand name or trademark, which could be used to build a reputation for quality. They also depended on new technologies and systems, either material (in the form of railroads that allowed for mail-order companies to flower and deliver cheaper goods through volume sales) or legal, like court decisions that made corporations easier to form and much more effective at managing interstate businesses. Strasser places the most emphasis on marketing, however, for it was marketing that introduced Americans to completely new goods (‘Oleomargarine? What kinda cow makes that?), marketing that coaxed them into trying it even when their local grocers didn’t want to stock it, and marketing that gradually lured them into not only using products, but becoming dependent on them. Marketing is why invention is the mother of necessity.
Although Strasser regards consumerism as wasteful, she doesn’t rail against the giants that promote it – indeed, depend on it. There are no villains in this piece, though she’s plainly sympathetic to the small businessmen, like the neighborhood grocers and general store managers, who were at first forced to keep goods on their shelves they had no experience with , and then driven out of business when large chains like A&P Groceries invaded. (Ads of the day directed potentials customers that if their local firms didn’t carry Crisco or the brand in question, they should forward the names and addresses of those firms to the corporation, who would see to it that the goods were offered for retail.) The new branded products didn’t offer storekeepers much of a profit margin, and eventually corporations began seeing local retailers as obstacles to reaching as broad a customer base as they possibly could – and that was the goal: not meeting needs, but devising any way to create and capture new markets. Whereas once Americans produced things in-house to satisfy their needs, now they were consumers who bought whatever ensnared their interests – and following the ‘credit revolution’, they didn’t even need to be limited by what they could afford.
Strasser’s previous work has been lively yet comprehensive, and Satisfaction Guaranteed largely meets those standards. Covering the intersection of business practices and lifestyle, she focuses more on new approaches business management than on lifestyle, the usual center of attention, which may broaden her audience to those interested in business in general. This by no means detracts from its appeal as an introduction to the origins of mass consumerism in America, however.

[charles gehr · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty good, pretty good.

[Paul Whitla · Rating 3 out of 5]

An historical account of the development of the practice of marketing in the United States roughly covering the period 1890-1920. Supported by many informative illustrations of package design, retail outlets etc. the book narrates the development of such familiar concepts as branding, self-service retailing, market research, mass manufacturing of packaged goods and to a limited extent promotion. To many today it is hard to believe that there was indeed a time when none of these things existed and the relative ‘modernity’ of marketing concepts comes as something of a surprise.

Some of the more interesting points raised concern conflicts in the distribution system. Strasser points out that the close retailer-consumer link had for a long time put the power into the hands of the retail merchant. With the coming of packaged goods, recommended retail prices and ‘brands as spokesmen’ this started to change with manufacturers developing direct relationships with consumers. In the middle of all this were the jobbers - independent salespeople and the wholesalers. They too took on a dominant role for a short period of time.

The author is not a marketing expert or practitioner and it shows. Although historically accurate the subject is discussed from a very ‘factual’ perspective with limited discussion of the later implications for the marketing profession. The short epilogue and the lack of discussion of the historical implications of what happened at this time are the book’s major shortcomings.

[Robert Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strasser writes about how mass production created the need to create mass markets, and goes into depth looking at how those markets and desire were created by advertising, the creation of brands, and other techniques. The book could be easily compared with Stuart Ewen's Captains of Consciousness, but while Ewen focuses on the intellectuals that created this shift in production and consumption, Strasser focuses on the business practices that created that change. In as much, the text goes into great detail about the creation of a variety of practices designed by businesses to get the loyalty of customers, from giveaways to advertisements. Definitely, an interesting read, although I prefer the scope of Ewen's book.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a history of marketing when the USA was developing after the Civil War until the 1920's. It starts real good, but about 2/3's of the way through, it starts to drag. I am not quite sure why. It just might be the subject matter was not as interesting to me. What is interesting is to read how large manufacturers and distributors grew into basically what we have in many ways today. Some of the specific stories of brands as well as the old pictures were fun to read and see.

[Laginestra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vi siete mai chiesti quale viso nascondono i grandi marchi? Non troverete la risposta qui, scordatelo, ma il libro svelerà la nascita e lo sviluppo dei marchi nel nuovo mercato americano di fine ottocento e inizio novecento. Il signor Gillette, mister Coca Cola, la nascita delle soap opera e tanti aneddoti in un libro scientificamente impeccabile e particolarmente divertente.

[Cynda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book confused me. I got lost in definitions/descriptions of wholesalers, jobbers, and retailers. I finally figured it out. Sometimes I thought my lack of understanding had to do with me. Not some. Loops and loops and loops.

[Gea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Read about the history of the consumer.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid study of American business history and advertising methods. Lots of good illustrations.