{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":181,"pdf_page":189,"physical_index":189,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"25e97edef78b1d146f94ee23da0e8c25d02964a4cb436bdae6e2bd221fdb00cb"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"The consensus among business historians is that the modern era of brands commenced around 1870 (Strasser 1989; Low and Fullerton 1994). Brands had existed in America in the earlier nineteenth century but were for the most part restricted to two kinds of commodity—patent medicine and tobacco. From the later nineteenth century onward, however, branded goods spread throughout the marketplace and into all product categories.\n\nThe spread of branded, mass-produced goods was dependent on developments in production, distribution, and commercial law. Standardized mass production made it possible for consumer goods to be much more consistent in quality, which allowed brand names to be anchored to uniform products. On the most basic level, brand names operate by indexing regularity in the properties of the goods they are attached to—it is dificult to imagine brands working in that way if individual samples of branded products were to vary too wildly. For that reason, the standardization of product specifications was a prerequisite for the rise to dominance of the modern branded commodity. Advances in packaging technologies and new printing techniques made it easy to produce striking labels on which brand names could be displayed. The expansion of transportation along with the appearance in the later nineteenth century of department stores and chain stores as vital nodes in new distribution networks, gave producers unprecedented access to national markets (Chandler 1977). Access to these national markets made possible new economies of scale, which made it worthwhile for manufacturers to invest in brand recognition. Brand recognition was facilitated by the growth of print media, which greatly expanded opportunities for advertising. Lastly, changes in trademark law in the late nineteenth century made it much easier for brand names to be protected.1\n\nWith these material and structural conditions in place, the branded consumer commodity soon became commonplace in the market. According to Robert Lynd, writing in the early 1930s, the value attached to businesses with recognized brand names had in the space of just a few years increased from five times annual earnings to sixteen times annual earnings (Lynd 1933, pp. 875–76).2 George Burton Hotchkiss, chairman of the department of advertising at New York University, reminisced in 1925 about a time when, to the astonishment of all, a brand name for baking powder was valued at \\$5,000,000—“ a million dollars a letter,” as he put it. Yet Hotchkiss observed that such valuations had, at the time of his writing, become quite unexceptional, commenting that, evidently, “we have become accustomed to the idea that the name of a product (or a person) can acquire monetary value through the process of becoming favorably known to the public.”3 The increasing value attached to brand names was accompanied by their rapid proliferation. By 1934, over half a million trademarks had been registered in Washington as identifying brands. The marketing trade journal Printer’s Ink in the mid-1930s counted over five thousand “commodity slogans” associated with brands (Wilcox 1934). As brands became increasingly pervasive, so did awareness of them among consumers. Research in the 1920s revealed that brand-name recognition had become widespread, with one study showing that 100 percent of its sample (of three hundred men) were able to name brands for each of the category of goods they were asked about and another showing that 90 percent of Chicago grocers claimed that at least three quarters of their customers asked for products by brand name (Strasser 1989 p. 52). The annual consumer survey conducted by the Milwaukee Journal in 1930 indicated the extent to which everyday consumer purchasing decisions were brand-led. Of the households surveyed, 71 percent bought cofee by brand, 78 percent bought soap by brand, 87 percent bought soups by brand, and 81 percent bought butter by brand, with similar numbers for most other staples. By the middle part of the twentieth century, branded commodities were firmly in place at the center of the consumer economy.\n\nStandardizing Utility\n\n181","previous_page":null,"next_page":182}