Amazon.com description: Product Description: Without marketing there is no business. This axiom lies at the heart of this book. "The Rise and Fall of Mass-Marketing" offers new insights into the changes in interpretation of marketing and the evolution of marketing strategies during the 20th century. The focus is on the development of mass marketing in the United States and the way in which more flexible and adaptable forms of marketing have been taking over in the late 20th century. The chapter by Ken'ichi Yasumuro on Japan offers new insights on how advanced Japanese companies from the 1970s developed flexible and highly successful manufacturing and related marketing systems. Other chapters provide detailed analysis of the marketing of a range of products,including motor cars, washing machines, food retailing, Scotch whisky, computers, financial services and wheat. The essays in this book range over the 20th century up to the present day. The approach of the text offers new ways of thinking about the study of marketing. The chapter by Mark Casson, for example, explores the economic theory of marketing, a subject which is just beginning to receive attention.