Agricultural policy occupied the opening research pages. When the first issue of the Journal of Marketing appeared in July 1936, Don S. Anderson discussed consumers and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Edward A. Duddy’s comments followed immediately. The journal’s opening was therefore a discussion of markets, government, and consumer interests, rather than a celebration of an advertising campaign (Anderson, 1936; Duddy, 1936).
That beginning offers a useful route into the history of marketing scholarship. The Journal of Marketing, usually abbreviated to JM, became an influential place for developing and debating marketing knowledge. Its importance cannot be explained simply by calling it the first marketing journal. That description overlooks both its direct predecessors and earlier specialist publications. The more interesting story concerns how a continuing publication helped connect people, problems, and arguments across generations.
Marketing history often follows an inventor, a business, or a celebrated technique. A journal requires a different approach. Its contribution lies partly in the individual articles it publishes, but also in its ability to make their relationship visible. One author can define a problem, another can question the definition, and subsequent researchers can revisit the evidence. A periodical gives these encounters an address, a sequence, and an archive.
When was the Journal of Marketing founded?
The inaugural issue was published in July 1936 as volume 1, number 1. The new title resulted from the combination of the American Marketing Journal and the National Marketing Review. In his editorial history, Roger A. Kerin explains that the consolidation of the journals preceded the formation of the American Marketing Association on January 1, 1937 (Kerin, 1996).
The sequence matters. Referring to JM as an AMA journal is appropriate when describing its subsequent institutional identity. Describing the AMA as an already established association launching its journal in July 1936 would compress two different events into one. Publication history and association history are closely connected here, but their dates should not be treated as interchangeable.
Bibliographic records make the immediate predecessors easy to identify. The American Marketing Journal ran from 1934 to 1936, while the National Marketing Review appeared from 1935 to 1936. JSTOR includes both in the title history associated with JM (JSTOR, n.d.). The journal’s own ancestry therefore prevents an unqualified claim that regularly published marketing scholarship began with the new title in 1936.
Why the claim to be the first marketing journal needs qualification
There was also an older specialist publication. The Journal of Retailing began in 1925, as documented by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries’ serial archive guide. Surviving early volumes show that retailing already had a dedicated scholarly publishing history well before JM appeared (University of Pennsylvania Libraries, n.d.).
The difference in scope is important, but it does not justify erasing this predecessor. Retailing is a particular area of marketing; a broad marketing journal serves a different purpose. Neither category makes the other historically irrelevant. If the claim concerns the earliest scholarly publication covering marketing, retailing must be considered. If it concerns the earliest broad marketing title, the two journals merged in 1936 remain unavoidable evidence.
Marketing-related scholarship also appeared inside economics. Dave Bussière examined pre-1936 publications of the American Economic Association and identified relevant articles beginning in 1894. His study demonstrates that a periodic literature existed before marketing acquired its own consolidated publishing institutions (Bussière, 2000). A discipline can build a new home for knowledge that previously circulated through other intellectual communities.
This distinction changes the historical question. Instead of asking who first thought scientifically about marketing, we can ask why a shared journal became useful at this particular moment. A new publication can signal that existing conversations have become sufficiently extensive to require their own forum. It can also make the boundaries of a field more visible to universities, practitioners, and neighboring disciplines.
What a journal adds to a field of knowledge
A textbook organizes a body of knowledge at a particular time. A journal establishes a continuing opportunity to change it. Authors do not need to wait for a comprehensive new book before presenting a limited finding or challenging an established assumption. Readers can follow an argument as it develops rather than encountering only its later, stabilized version.
This arrangement also creates a form of public responsibility. A claim acquires a named author and an identifiable place in the record. Other researchers can examine whether the evidence supports the conclusion, whether the terms are clear, and whether the conditions of an investigation justify a wider inference. Publication does not guarantee correctness, but it makes a particular statement available for scrutiny.
An archive preserves uncertainty as well as achievement. A concept that now looks obvious may originally have been controversial or poorly defined. A promising approach may have disappeared for reasons that a textbook no longer discusses. Reading successive issues reveals choices that later histories can make look inevitable. The journal becomes evidence of how a discipline worked, not merely a storehouse of conclusions it eventually accepted.
Opening the first issue
Anderson’s article appeared on pages 3-9, followed by Duddy’s comments on pages 9-12. These details establish that public policy and consumer interests were prominent at the beginning of the inaugural issue. They do not, by themselves, establish every position taken in the two texts. The existence and placement of a discussion must be distinguished from a full interpretation of its arguments (Anderson, 1936; Duddy, 1936).
H. K. Nixon’s “Notes on the Measurement of Consumers’ Attitudes” occupied pages 13-19. J. E. Hagerty’s “Experiences of an Early Marketing Teacher” followed on pages 20-27 (Nixon, 1936; Hagerty, 1936). Their proximity is revealing. The issue made room both for the investigation of consumers and for reflection on the teaching through which marketing knowledge could be reproduced.
These are complementary institutional problems. A field needs evidence about its objects of study, but it also needs people capable of explaining its methods and concepts to others. Research without transmission has limited reach. Teaching without continuing inquiry risks turning contingent observations into fixed rules. The first issue brought these activities into the same published space.
For a museum reader, that conjunction is more informative than a simple list of famous names. It shows the work required to make marketing a teachable and discussable field. The journal did not merely report discoveries from an already complete discipline. It participated in the processes through which the discipline recognized its problems and communicated them to successive audiences.
Research direction and an international subject
The inaugural issue also included Frank R. Coutant’s “Where Are We Bound in Marketing Research?” on pages 28-34 and Karl Brandt’s “Market Research in Germany” on pages 35-39 (Coutant, 1936; Brandt, 1936). An international subject was therefore present from the beginning, alongside explicit consideration of the direction of marketing research.
That observation needs careful limits. An article about another country demonstrates attention to that country; it does not establish an equally representative international research community. Nor can a title explain the author’s full assessment of the political and institutional conditions under which research occurred. Germany in 1936 was a dictatorship, and an interpretation of research in that setting requires more than noticing that a German case appeared in an American journal.
The distinction between international subject matter and international participation remains useful throughout the journal’s history. A publication can investigate markets around the world while drawing mainly on a particular national viewpoint. Historians must ask who produced an account, which local sources were available, and whose categories organized the explanation. The visibility of other countries is an important finding, but it is not the same finding as intellectual equality among them.
Industrial equipment, retailing, and radio
Bernard Lester contributed “Changing Methods in the Marketing of Industrial Equipment” on pages 46-52 of the same issue (Lester, 1936). Its presence documents attention to business markets, extending the inaugural scope beyond advertising to household consumers. A journal capable of accommodating such subjects could connect inquiries about quite different kinds of buyers, products, and transactions.
The review section provides another revealing detail. L. C. Lockley reviewed Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport’s book “The Psychology of Radio” on page 68 (Lockley, 1936). Radio thus entered the inaugural issue through a discussion of a book as well as through the wider contemporary environment in which the journal appeared. Reviews helped readers locate work beyond the journal’s own research articles.
This editorial function is easily underestimated. A research community cannot read every relevant book as soon as it appears. Reviews select, describe, and evaluate materials, helping readers decide where to direct their attention. They can affect what enters a course, what informs a research proposal, or what becomes part of an accepted account of the field. The history of a journal consequently includes the organization of attention as well as the publication of original arguments.
Paul H. Nystrom and the organization of editing
The AMA identifies Paul H. Nystrom as the first editor in chief. Its historical list records overlapping early appointments, including Nystrom in 1936-1937 and N. H. Engle in 1936-1939. An accompanying note describes a subsequent arrangement in which an editor served two years as managing editor and then two years as editor in chief (American Marketing Association, n.d. a).
An overlapping list should therefore not automatically be treated as an error. Different dates can refer to different responsibilities. A historical account needs to establish the organizational meaning of a title before turning a list into a succession of supposedly exclusive appointments. Editorial structures change, and those changes are themselves part of the institution’s development.
Editing also involves a less visible kind of continuity. Manuscripts have to be obtained, assessed, revised, organized, and issued. Authors need a dependable destination for their work, while readers need confidence that the conversation will continue. The celebrated article is the visible result of this infrastructure. Explaining the journal’s influence requires acknowledging the recurring labor that made a durable record possible.
Scholarship did not always look as it does today
Terrence H. Witkowski’s study of the predecessor journals found a broad range of subjects, frequent single authorship, relatively limited citation, and substantial attention to marketing’s relationship with society (Witkowski, 2010). The early literature did not simply reproduce the appearance of a contemporary empirical research article.
This difference should invite historical interpretation rather than an easy judgment that earlier work was either inferior or exempt from criticism. A classification, an account of experience, and a statistical investigation make different contributions. Their claims need to be understood before their evidence can be assessed. Treating every form of scholarship as if it were attempting the same task obscures both its strengths and its limitations.
The same caution applies to peer review. The present identity of a journal cannot establish the exact editorial procedure applied to every manuscript in its first year. Reconstructing those procedures would require contemporary rules, editorial correspondence, or research specifically examining them. It would be misleading to project an unchanged modern reviewing system back into 1936 without such evidence.
The development of standards is part of the story. Disciplines alter their expectations about citation, explanation, evidence, and methodological detail. A historian can investigate these changes without assuming that there was either one timeless scientific format or a clean break between an unscientific past and a scientific present. Journals preserve the material through which that investigation becomes possible.
1956: A strategic distinction becomes an identifiable reference
Wendell R. Smith’s “Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies” appeared in July 1956, in volume 21, number 1, on pages 3-8. It framed differentiation and segmentation as distinct strategic responses to market conditions (Smith, 1956).
For the institutional history of JM, the important point is the transformation of an argument into a stable published reference. Other researchers could identify the author, locate the text, and debate the distinction. The article’s existence does not mean that firms had never previously served different customer groups. It marks an explicit contribution to the conceptual organization of strategic problems.
This is why the history of ideas should be distinguished from a chronology of practical firsts. A practice can exist before a scholar gives a systematic account of it. A published account can also circulate for some time before influencing a particular business. The journal records the development of articulated knowledge; it cannot, on its own, document every marketing action that occurred outside its pages.
1969: Debating the boundaries of marketing
Philip Kotler and Sidney J. Levy published “Broadening the Concept of Marketing” in January 1969, in volume 33, number 1, on pages 10-15. Their proposal extended marketing beyond a domain confined to commercial business (Kotler and Levy, 1969). The journal was hosting an argument about the reach of the discipline itself.
Boundary decisions have practical consequences. If a subject is defined only in terms of business sales, other forms of organization appear peripheral. A wider definition changes the questions that researchers ask and the examples that educators consider legitimate. It can also generate disagreement about whether the resulting category still explains anything distinctive. Such disagreements concern the organization of knowledge, not merely vocabulary.
The role of a journal in this situation differs from that of a handbook. A handbook may present an accepted definition. A journal can make the definition a contested object of inquiry. Its significance lies partly in preserving the discussion through which a field determines what it includes, what it excludes, and what kinds of explanation it considers useful.
Organizational buying and the nature of the field
In 1972, Frederick E. Webster Jr. and Yoram Wind published “A General Model for Understanding Organizational Buying Behavior.” Their model treated industrial and institutional buying as an organizational decision process (Webster and Wind, 1972). The example illustrates the journal’s accommodation of inquiries in which an isolated household consumer is not the central unit.
Shelby D. Hunt’s “The Nature and Scope of Marketing” followed in 1976. It addressed debates about the field’s scope and scientific character (Hunt, 1976). Placed beside the organizational buying article, it reveals a different intellectual task: not only explaining a particular market process, but considering the categories through which the discipline organizes its inquiries.
Both tasks matter. Research needs accounts of specific phenomena, yet it also needs ways to determine whether investigations are asking comparable questions. Without conceptual clarity, similar terms may conceal very different objects of study. A journal can support useful decision making while also publishing work whose immediate purpose is to improve the discipline’s understanding of its own structure.
Relationships, trust, and the creation of value
Robert M. Morgan and Shelby D. Hunt’s 1994 “Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing” placed commitment and trust at the center of a model tested with data from automobile tire retailers (Morgan and Hunt, 1994). The example connects a theoretical proposal with an empirical setting without implying that every relationship in every market must behave identically.
Stephen L. Vargo and Robert F. Lusch proposed a further conceptual shift in their 2004 article “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing.” They emphasized service provision and the application of knowledge and skills in exchange (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). The publication of such a proposal demonstrates that conceptual reorientation remained part of the journal’s work.
These articles should not be arranged as a simple replacement sequence. Attention to relationships does not erase segmentation, and attention to service does not make organizational buying irrelevant. Different frameworks can illuminate different aspects of the same situation. A lasting archive keeps these intellectual layers available, enabling later readers to compare assumptions that would disappear in a story devoted only to the newest approach.
Older and international alternatives
Britain provides an instructive comparison. The Incorporated Sales Managers’ Association renamed its magazine “Marketing” in 1931, according to the historical chronology maintained by today’s Chartered Institute of Marketing. A professional association magazine should not automatically be treated as equivalent to an academic research journal, but it belongs in the wider history of marketing publishing (Chartered Institute of Marketing, n.d.).
Comparisons become more useful when they identify functions rather than award a universal prize for being first. Publications can support professional education, report research, review books, or connect members. They may perform several of these tasks at once. An earlier title does not necessarily have the same audience or standards as a later one, and a difference in audience is not a reason to exclude it from history.
The “Routledge Companion to Marketing History,” edited by D. G. Brian Jones and Mark Tadajewski, situates the subject in a broader historical and international field (Jones and Tadajewski, 2016). That perspective is a useful safeguard against confusing the record of an influential American institution with the totality of marketing knowledge. The visibility of a journal reflects its importance, but also the languages, networks, and collections through which its record survives.
A growing system of specialist journals
The Journal of Marketing Research began in 1964, with its first issue published in February. The Journal of Consumer Research followed in June 1974 (American Marketing Association, 1964; Journal of Consumer Research, 1974). The appearance of these titles documents a publishing landscape developing beyond a single general journal.
Specialization responds to a structural problem in an expanding discipline. As methods and subjects multiply, a common forum cannot give equal space to every conversation. Specialist outlets permit greater depth and more closely shared technical expectations. At the same time, they increase the value of publications that connect discussions and make their implications intelligible to a wider readership.
JM’s place in this landscape need not be defended by minimizing other journals. Its significance includes its contribution to a larger division of intellectual labor. A specialist outlet may be the most useful source for one question, while a broader article may help relate that question to other marketing problems. Historical influence is better explained through these relationships than through an assumption that one title must be superior for every purpose.
What the journal now asks of a contribution
The current editorial guidelines emphasize substantive marketing questions and connections between scholarly and practical perspectives. They explicitly recognize both conceptual and empirical contributions (American Marketing Association, n.d. b). New constructs and arguments can therefore matter alongside investigations using systematically organized observations.
For readers, this distinction provides a way to assess a paper on its own terms. A conceptual article should not be rejected simply because it contains no new survey. Its argument needs clear definitions, convincing reasoning, and a meaningful contribution. An empirical article has additional obligations concerning its data and the relationship between observation and inference.
Practitioners benefit from maintaining these distinctions. A measured association, a proposed framework, and evidence supporting a causal claim are different kinds of knowledge. Each may be useful, but they cannot be substituted for one another without changing what the evidence supports. Reading carefully is therefore a practical skill as well as an academic requirement.
Impact factors and the limits of permanent superlatives
On the journal page consulted on October 22, 2026, the AMA displayed a two-year impact factor of 10.6 and a five-year figure of 18.9. The visible page did not clearly assign those figures a reporting year. They should therefore be understood as a dated observation of the website, rather than an independently verified historical series (American Marketing Association, n.d. c).
Such figures cannot establish that JM has continuously held the highest impact factor of all marketing journals. That claim would require a defined comparison group and comparable annual records. Nor does a high position in one ranking answer every question about methodological reliability, practical usefulness, or the importance of an individual article. Citation performance and these other qualities concern related but distinct matters.
A museum account can explain the journal’s standing more securely through its documented publishing history and its role in important debates. This does not diminish the institution. It replaces a fragile superlative with an account of what it actually did. Historical importance becomes more persuasive when the evidence and the claim are proportionate.
Reading an archive without knowing the winners in advance
There are two different ways to approach a journal’s past. One is to search for the origin of a familiar concept. This usually leads toward an article already recognized as important. The other is to read a complete issue or year without deciding in advance which contributions deserve attention. The second approach reveals ordinary concerns, abandoned paths, and problems that later summaries may overlook.
The difference resembles the distinction between a gallery of celebrated objects and an examination of an entire surviving collection. A selection of classics can create the impression that a discipline always moved toward its present arrangement. Complete issues restore the coexistence of competing interests. They show that later prominence was not necessarily obvious to contemporary readers.
Bibliographic details matter in this work. A volume can contain several issues, and continuous page numbering does not identify a month on its own. A reference may locate a text correctly while misdating the issue in which it appeared. Checking the original issue record is a modest but effective safeguard, especially when dates have been repeated through many secondary summaries.
Digital access adds another layer. An archive can display the name of a present publisher alongside a much older article, or make the date of online availability especially prominent. These details help readers find a document, but they should not be confused with its original conditions of publication. Creation, print publication, digitization, and current distribution are separate events.
Publication is not the same as practical adoption
An article establishes that an argument entered a public record at a particular time. It does not establish that every relevant company knew or applied it. Even extensive academic citation would not, on its own, demonstrate a specific business use. Evidence for that further claim might lie in teaching materials, consulting records, company documents, or contemporary testimony.
This distinction makes the journal’s contribution more concrete. It provided infrastructure in which ideas could be examined and developed. Their passage into organizational decisions depended on additional people and institutions. A history of influence needs to trace those connections rather than assume that publication and adoption were the same event.
International circulation involves a similar challenge. Translation can alter a concept, and a model can perform a different function in another commercial setting. Worldwide influence is therefore more than the multiplication of readers. It includes adaptation, selection, and disagreement. The journal is a valuable starting point for investigating these processes, but sources beyond its own archive are necessary to follow them fully.
How to read a classic marketing article historically
Begin with the version actually published. Its title, date, volume, and pages help prevent a later textbook summary from replacing the original argument. Then ask what problem the author was trying to solve. An explanation written for particular institutions or market conditions should not silently become a claim about every setting.
Next, separate the evidence from the interpretation. A contents page establishes the presence of a subject, an abstract identifies a stated purpose, and a full article permits a more extensive assessment. A retrospective history may reveal subsequent significance, but it introduces another point of view. These sources are useful because they answer different questions, not because they are interchangeable.
Finally, follow the conversation beyond the famous text. How was its terminology adopted or changed? Which objections mattered? Which countries or participants remained absent? Approached this way, the Journal of Marketing reveals a discipline continually reconsidering its problems and its relationship to practice.
Its founding in 1936 remains a major event precisely because it brought existing efforts into a durable common form. Recognizing earlier publications makes that achievement easier to understand. The journal gave a developing community a continuing place to record evidence, propose distinctions, and disagree. That institutional contribution explains its enduring place in marketing history.
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