Trade and marketing

Abstract

This article examines the role of active marketing and distribution in different branches of industry in Sweden during the nineteenth century. The case studies from the cloth, cotton and metal trades show that successful firms were active during the industrialisation process, and combined production and distribution with marketing activities.

The expanding cloth manufactures in Norrköping seem to have combined production with their own selling activities to a greater extent than those operating in the old, stagnating cloth centre of Stockholm. This could have given them the flexibility and special competence to take advantage of the growing home market, at the expense of the Stockholm manufactures which were not able to stay in business.

Advertising in local newspapers became more important after the middle of the century. Local shopkeepers, especially drapers, in small towns seem to have played a strategic role in this. The new, mechanised cotton companies also incurred expenses for advertisements and other forms of mass marketing, though only to a small extent. Active marketing also became more important in the expanding metal trade.