Proceedings of Seventeenth Xoemal Institute 145 



MARKETING 

 Professor Bristow Adams 



a. Better Understanding of Consumers' End. 



b. Standardization of Products. 



c. Organization at Producers' End. 



No less an authority than Dean Galloway has said that " most 

 of the pressure to secure changes in the methods of distribution 

 and marketing of farm products has come not so much from the 

 farmers as from non-producers who are feeling the pinch of the 

 increasing cost of living." My own experience has led me to 

 realize the truth of this. 



My whole talk tonight is based on that experience, which came 

 to me before I had any theories to expound, and before I had 

 studied the question of marketing at all, except as the subject 

 entered into a discussion of the cooperative disposal of the pro- 

 ducts of the farmer's woodlot. I had seen how foresters were 

 insistent on the methods of increasing and improving woodlot 

 production, but I could not see what good it did a farmer to raise 

 more or better timber if he did not get an adequate return for 

 what he produced. In that case I went into the economics of the 

 situation with a fair amount of thoroughness, and read all the 

 literature I could find, from authorities in this country and those 

 abroad. It seemed to me that the theories propounded were gen- 

 erally applicable in all relations where the seller and the buyer 

 were, respectively, the producer and the consumer. 



Some of these theories fitted into an actual experience I had 

 as manager, treasurer and secretary of a cooperative group of 

 buyers in the city of Washington. 



THE consumer's END 



It was there that I learned to appreciate and to understand the 

 difficulties at the consumers' end, which is the subject of the first 

 division assigned to me tonight. Before going into details, it is 

 well to state one plain fact : The more the consumer and the pro^ 

 ducer know of each others' problems, the more likely they are to 



