By the late 1920s the rapid increase in North American consumer spending seen after the First World War was in decline.1 Recognizing that they were potentially facing impending financial ruin, manufacturers of commercial goods responded by relegating the task of revamping their selling tactics to their marketing departments, which quickly ascertained that for the goods they were promoting to succeed in the marketplace they must first appeal to the taste of the consumer.
Women of the era were experiencing unprecedented enhanced consumer power with fewer children to look after, increased mobility due to the automobile, and more free time in which to shop as a result of the introduction of labor-saving, domestic electrical appliances. They were quite logically identified as a likely target market to which business should direct its attention. An advertisement of the period in Printer's Ink Magazine reflects this awareness by stating that, "the proper study of mankind is man... but the proper study of markets is woman."
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