Suchergebnisse

This article explores how 800-service, or toll-free long-distance (In-WATS) lines, became an institutionalized part of direct marketing in the United States between the mid-1960s and early 1980s. Introduced by AT&T in 1967, 800-service attracted immediate attention in mail-order circles, where marketers saw it as means of automating long-distance selling and catering to an increasingly decentralized and credit-dependent populace. Although early initiatives, like that of catalog giant Aldens, fell flat, 800-service gained traction by the mid-1970s as a call-center industry developed and mail-order operations began using In-WATS lines in combination with bank-issued credit cards and private delivery services. By decade's end, this trio of networks—long-distance telephony, credit/payment, and parcel delivery—were densely interwoven, forming the infrastructural basis for a new kind of "anywhere, anytime," upscale shopping exemplified by the newly refashioned Spiegel. Ultimately, the article helps historicize the rise of electronic retailing and the marketization of telecommunications infrastructure.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: Surveillance Under Capitalism -- Chapter 1. Enslaved Watchmen: Surveillance and Sousveillance in Jamaica and the British Atlantic World -- Chapter 2. The Information Bazaar: Mail- Order Magazines and the Gilded Age Trade in Consumer Data -- Chapter 3. The Case of the Competing Pinkertons: Managing Reputation Through the Paperwork and Bureaucracy of Surveillance -- Chapter 4. Mystery Shoppers and Self- Monitors: Managing Emotional Labor to Improve the Corporate Image -- Chapter 5. The Watchful Gaze Behind the Welcoming Smile: Surveilling the Guest in American Hotels in the Interwar Period -- Chapter 6. Seeing Straight: Policing Sexualities in 1930s Manhattan Nightclubs -- Chapter 7. High Priority: Business's War on Drugs and the Expansion of Surveillance in the United States -- Chapter 8. Why Did Uptown Go Down in Flames? Uptown Cigarettes and the Targeted Marketing Crisis -- Chapter 9. Surveillance Capitalism Online: Cookies, Notice and Choice, and Web Privacy -- Afterword -- NOTES -- CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS