Satisfaction Guaranteed or Latino Los Angeles

Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market

Author: Susan Strasser

This timeless account of the rise of the mass market in America includes a new preface.

This sweeping history provides the reader with a better understanding of America's consumer society, obsession with shopping, and devotion to brands. Focusing on the advertising campaigns of Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Wrigley's, Gillette, and Kodak, Strasser shows how companies created both national brands and national markets. These new brands eventually displaced generic manufacturers and created a new desire for brand-name goods. The book also details the rise and development of department stores such as Macy's, grocery store chains such as A&P and Piggly Wiggly, and mail-order companies like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. 126 b/w photographs and illustrations.

Author Biography: Susan Strasser teaches history at the University of Delaware. Her books include Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. She lives in Washington, DC.

Publishers Weekly

This well-researched and documented history of goods-and-customer interaction since the days of bartering is also a delightful overview of American shopping customs from 19th-century Main Street to today's malls. Early in the 20th century, Strasser shows, advertising of national brandsquotes unnec.?/unnec.gs launched products creating their own demand--safety razors, cameras, fountain pens (with attendant consumption of blades, film, etc.)--thus gradually displacing networks of generic manufacturers whose sales ``drummers'' fanned across America by rail and buggy. The development of department stores such as Macy's, mail-order giants like Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, grocery chains foreshadowing supermarkets, ``aids'' like premiums, displays and trading stamps and the skyrocket successes of Coca-Cola and Wrigley's gum are only a fraction of the sweeping story, as the author of Never Done brings into focus major social and economic forces linked to our daily lives. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Strasser, who also has written a history of housework ( Never Done , LJ 5/1/81), explains how advertising techniques developed in the early years of this century, especially the brand-name concept, have shaped the modern American appetite for particular mass-produced goods. Beginning with Crisco in 1912, she describes various campaigns to sell new products, emphasizing how the goal from the outset has been ``to make people want things,'' which puts profits ahead of consumer needs. The legacy has been pernicious: ``a consumer culture that itself breeds constant discontent, depending always on individuals wanting more.'' Free enterprise advocates will take exception, but this thoughtful look at how Americans consume is worth anyone's time.-- Kenneth F. Kister, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Booknews

A history of the marketing campaigns of such brands as Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Wrigley's, and Kodak and an analysis of the creation of a market for mass-produced, trademarked goods. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

1	American pie	3
2	The name on the label	29
3	The chain of distribution	58
4	New products, new habits	89
5	Designing markets	124
6	Sales and promotions	163
7	The new retailing	203
8	The politics of packaged products	252
9	Epilogue	286

New interesting textbook: Managing Workplace Negativity or Heavens Door

Latino Los Angeles: Transformations, Communities, and Activism

Author: Enrique C Ochoa

As the twenth-first century begins, Latinas/os represent 45 percent of the residents of Los Angeles County, making them the largest racial/ethnic group in the region. At the same time, the shift from manufacturing to a service-based economy in the area has contributed to a decline in good-paying jobs, significantly impacting working class families. These transformations have created a backlash that has included state propositions impacting Latinas/os and escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric—and Latina/os of all backgrounds are making their voices heard. Until recently, most research on Latinas/os in the U.S. has ignored historical and contemporary dynamics in Latin America, just as scholars of Latin America have generally stopped their studies at the border. This volume roots Los Angeles in the larger arena of globalization, exploring the demographic changes that have transformed the Latino presence in LA from primarily Mexican-origin to one that now includes peoples from throughout the hemisphere. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, it combines historical perspectives with analyses of power and inequality to consider how Latinas/os are responding to exclusionary immigration, labor, and schooling practices and actively creating communities. The contributors examine Latina/o Los Angeles in the context of historical, economic and social factors that have shaped the region. The first section provides contexts for understanding Latina/o migration, with chapters focusing on such factors as U.S. economic and military domination, labor and economic integration in the Americas, and Los Angeles' economic history. The second section considers how various Latina/ogroups have settled and formed communities and interacted with the existing Mexican-origin populations, showing how Zapotecs, Salvadorans, and other peoples are remaking urban demographics. The final section on labor organizing and political activism examines the role of Latina/o immigrants in such actions as the janitors' strike and also considers the contemporary role of students in political activism. The volume concludes with an up-to-date compilation of contemporary scholarship on immigration, the economy, schools, neighborhoods, gender and activism as they relate to Central American and Mexican immigrants. Reflecting a range of methodologies—statistical, historical, ethnographic, and participatory research—this collection is relevant not only to ethnic studies but also to broader concerns in political science, sociology, history, economics, and urban studies. In addition, some chapters focus explicitly on women, and gender issues are interwoven throughout the text. Latino Los Angeles is an important work that contributes to contemporary scholarship on transnationalism as it reexamines the changing face of America's largest western metropolis.