Mass Market
Definition
Between the late 1800s and early 1900s the “American Dream” was being built through the industrializations of American Capitalism and Consumerism. This new age of commercialism created what is known as the mass market, or when large numbers of the population want to buy a product, either influenced by advertising, trademarks, popular brand names, sales, catalogs, and culture of the time. The mass market reconstructed many business practices and economic institutions in American society. The reason for this shift was due to the expansion of immense production that created masses of products with cheap prices, mostly due to machine manufacturing. Many products that were once handmade over a few hours could now be processed in minutes by machinery, making them cheaper. [1]
Origin
With the boom of the second industrial revolution, that began in 1870, electricity, chemical innovation, steel production, and petroleum drove the growth the machinery and mass production. [1] Many called this time “democratizing consumption” making products readily available to everyone due to the cheap prices of goods. Richard S. Tedlow, a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, claims “profit of volume, entrepreneurial vision, vertical system, first-movers and entry barriers, the competitor’s options, and managing change.” (Cohen 551), characterized the mass market of the 20th century. He believes that the market was not controlled by the consumers but that the marketers shaped the way consumers bought, molding a dependence on marketers and advertisers to tell them what the need, want, or what everybody else has.[2]
Impact on Publishing
Due to the increase in production goods like books were printed at large scale numbers. After World War II there was a rapid increase of readers. With the recent invention of the paperback book, it became easier and cheaper for people to purchase them. Through the mass-market boom, publishers began instituting by genre and large publishing conglomerates bought mass-market publishing housing in the 1960s. This shifted the publishing world, and companies were receiving more revenue than ever before. In the 1980s market segmentation and sales prioritization became normal factors in the industry and would continue to impact publishing to modern day and the mass market continues to thrive in America's Capitalistic Culture. [3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “Mass Marketing | Encyclopedia.com.” Www.encyclopedia.com, www.encyclopedia.com/history/culture-magazines/mass-marketing
- ↑ Cohen, Lizabeth. “The Mass in Mass Consumption.” New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America; Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market; For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumptionby Richard S. Tedlow et al. Reviews in American History, vol. 18, no. 4, 1990, pp. 548–55. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2703053. Accessed 8 Apr. 2026.
- ↑ Sinykin, Dan. “Mass Market (I): How Mass-Market Books Changed Publishing.” Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, Columbia University Press, 2023, pp. 23–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/siny19294.5. Accessed 8 Apr. 2026.
