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“Slowly Becoming Sales Promotion Men?”: Negotiating the Career of the Sales Representative in Britain, 1920s–1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2015

MIKE FRENCH
MIKE FRENCH*
Affiliation:
Mike French is a professor of economic and social history at the University of Glasgow. His research and publications have centered on British and U.S. business history, including studies of tire manufacturing, food regulation, and the careers and images of commercial travelers. Contact information: Lilybank House, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

The commercial traveler, or traveling salesman, was an agent of commercialism and modernization as well as a stock character in British popular culture. To C. Wright Mills, salesmen faced particularly challenging demands to conform to managerial direction. This article examines how British salesmen negotiated their occupational identity during the twentieth century. Developments in marketing, corporate growth, and periods of war and recession all challenged salesmen’s status and autonomy. These influences prompted a lengthy and recurring debate about how best to present, defend, and justify their work and identity. New marketing techniques and management systems evolved steadily, rather than producing sudden or uniform changes in the ways in which salesmen worked. Their culture of enterprise and individualism persisted, in part as it was shared by employers and managers. The impact of new marketing methods proved greatest in confectionery, tobacco, and other consumer goods trades as sales of branded, packaged goods expanded. Even then, salesmen contributed to shaping their work and occupational identity, proving unable to establish professional credentials and dividing over whether adopting trade union methods could improve their position.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 39 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. 

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