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Trust and Power

Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market

Sally H Clarke author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:24th May '07

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Trust and Power cover

Trust and Power argues that automobile corporations have historically faced conflicts with the very customers whose loyalty they sought.

Trust and Power examines the three major phases of the automobile market and argues that its corporations have faced conflicts with the very customers whose loyalty they sought. Such conflicts were present from the early 1900s through to the post-World War II market.Trust and Power argues that corporations have faced conflicts with the very consumers whose loyalty they sought. The book provides novel insights into the dialogue between corporations and consumers by examining the car industry during the twentieth century. In the new market at the turn of the century, car manufacturers produced defective cars, and consumers faced risks of physical injuries as well as financial losses. By the 1920s, cars were sold in a mass market where state agencies intervened to monitor, however imperfectly, product quality and fair pricing mechanisms. After 1945, the market matured as most US families came to rely on car transport. Again, the state intervened to regulate relations between buyers and sellers in terms of who had access to credit, and thus the ability to purchase expensive durables like cars.

"...anyone interested in the early years of the automobile industry or creative scholarship in business history will profit from reading this book." -Mark R. Wilson, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"...a valuable tool for those interested in the inner workings of the development of the automobile market." --Louis Rodriquez, Kutztown University: Canadian Journal of History
"This book will stand as a memorial to the times when the highway still beckoned." -Avner Offer, EH.NET
"...a fresh, multidisciplinary assessment of the rise of the American automobile industry." -Karen Linkletter, Michigan Historical Review

ISBN: 9780521868785

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 22mm

Weight: 560g

316 pages