Purpose – This paper aims to explore the parameters of Bulgarian cigarette advertising in the Cold War period. It contrasts the evolution of cigarette marketing in Bulgaria and the USA in the context of contrasting communist and capitalist notions of the “good life” versus the “common...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how state socialist countries used soft power to improve their image in the West and advocate “the socialist way of life” in the context of the Cold War. Design/methodology/approach – The author argues from a cultural history perspective...

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a history of a number of intellectual debates in marketing theory and consumer research. It outlines the key arguments involved, highlights the politics and acrimoniousness that often accompanied the competition for academic prestige or practitioner...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to revisit Russell Belk’s (1988) landmark paper “Possessions and the extended self”. The authors provide a prehistory of related ideas and then examine the controversy it triggered regarding the different paradigms of research in marketing (Cohen,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that fashion played in the Cold War competition between the USA and the Soviet Union during the period from 1945 to 1959. Design/methodology/approach – This paper begins by situating fashion within the larger American efforts of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to challenge Cold War binaries, seeking a more nuanced understanding of popular experience of change in the Soviet Union’s last decades. This was a period of intensive modernization and rapid transformation in Soviet citizens’ everyday material...