The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Mass Marketing

KRZYSZTOF KUBACKI

Griffith University, Australia

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs263

The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed manufacturing processes, enabling the emergence of mechanized production of a larger quantity of consumption goods in a cheaper and faster way. Thanks to mass production, by the late nineteenth century Western societies witnessed the growth of many companies to the size where they could no longer directly serve increasing numbers of their customers, who were spread over large geographical areas. At the beginning of the twentieth century, some of the early commercial efforts concentrated on what was then called “the marketing problem” (Jones and Monieson 2008), that is, how to move goods from the place where they were manufactured to the final consumer in the most efficient way. In the first half of the twentieth century, a growing number of competitors in many consumer markets shifted the emphasis away from mass production lines and the technological abilities to manufacture consumer goods (supply), toward activities that were designed to stimulate consumer demand. The so-called marketing mix, including not only products but also places (distribution channels), pricing, and promotion, became the heart of the emergence of mass marketing.

Mass marketing is a strategy based on the assumption that consumers have similar needs and wants (Elliot, Rundle-Thiele, and Waller 2014). It is the opposite ...