Puzzled about marketing and its history in Colombia, an interdisciplinary group at the Universidad de los Andes is working to publish pioneering studies that will become pedagogically useful to business schools’ faculty and students. After selecting some of the major figures in Colombian marketing, Professors José Miguel Ospina, Luis Fernando Molina, Gabriel Pérez and Carlos Dávila started publishing biographical accounts. Historia de la investigación de mercados en Colombia. trayectoria empresarial de Napoleón Franco is the second edited volume of this project; the first book (2008) focused on Enrique Luque Carulla.
This volume is divided in two parts. The first one contains five individually authored chapters that provide historical background and address methodological and theoretical issues. The second part presents in 11 chapters the biography of Napoleón Franco Armenta, a Colombian psychologist and entrepreneur who is reputed to be one of the major exponents of market research in Colombia.
Chapter 1, by Ospina, describes the origin and evolution of marketing research in the United States from 1910 to the 1930s. Chronologically narrated, this chapter presents fresh insight into the first developments in marketing and into firms conducting and hiring marketing research. The author also introduces pioneers such as Charles Coolidge Parlin, who played a key role at the firm Curtis Publishing Company. However, readers interested in the origins of marketing research in Colombia and in Latin America will find this chapter unsatisfactory because it is US centred.
In chapter 2, Carlos Dávila engages with oral history, biographical studies and with the so-called ‘Esquema de análisis para adelantar estudios de empresariado (EAHE)’, the editors’ own theoretical and methodological framework to study entrepreneurial history. After describing the relevance of oral history's conceptual and institutional mainstays – chiefly in the United States and Latin America – Dávila introduces briefly the production of biographical studies in Colombia, with clear emphasis on the work done by the Grupo de Historia y Empresariado (GHE) that Carlos Dávila leads at the Universidad de los Andes. Most of this chapter focuses on the EAHE. Although this methodological approach could be useful for business historians, a summarised version of the method would have sufficed in this volume because detailed descriptions are published elsewhere. Instead, a critical approach to the Esquema and its significance for research projects examining not only a person's biography, but also wider historical processes, would have strengthened the contribution of this chapter.
Chapters 3 through 5 offer important information about Colombian history, Napoleón Franco's life, and further methodological interpretations of oral testimonies. Chapter 3, by Luis Fernando Molina, presents a chronology from 1947 to 2013 that includes not only Napoleón Franco's key dates, but also elements of national and international history that help readers contextualise both the main character's story and the history of marketing research in Colombia. As a catalogue of facts, chapter 3 reads more as an appendix than a book chapter. Chapter 4, also by Molina, presents a brief analysis of Napoleón Franco's entrepreneurial activity in relation to his family and politics. This chapter argues that although Napoleón Franco's family has played an important role in his endeavours, Franco stands apart from the traditional academic understanding of Colombian entrepreneurs because his economic behaviour did not build on family tradition. By analysing Napoleón Franco's own narrative, Molina focuses on a sort of company history of Napoleón Franco y Compañía. However, this chapter develops confident claims and engages with generalisations and conceptual frameworks about family business that are not supported by the source materials. Besides the main character's testimonies, the only work cited is the aforementioned first volume of this research project.
Chapter 5 closes the first part of this book. Gabriel Pérez, the author, matches Franco's words with literature on business history to support the ‘hypothesis’ that ‘the origin of company names are linked more with persons’ names and families than impersonal names or initials’ (p. 135). As evidence, Pérez presents a list of companies whose names suggest family origins. Starting in the year 578 with the foundation of Kongo Gumi Co. in Osaka, half of this brief chapter offers a series of company names listed in chronological order and accompanied with some practical information such as founders’ names and economic activities. Later, this chapter explores cultural traits and market conditions influencing naming practices in business environments and, towards the end, the author also touches on theoretical and methodological considerations that, on the whole, are addressed in previous chapters. After reading the first part of this volume, scholars would find worrisome that with the exception of chapter 2, most of the cited literature, particularly about Colombia, dates from before 2004. This raises questions about the circulation of, and engagement with, the Colombian business and economic history that has been produced over the last prolific decade.
The second part of this book is sharply different. Eleven well-written and clearly connected chapters examine Napoleón Franco's personal and professional trajectory, from his birth in 1947 until the early 2000s. It is the result of a series of interviews and the particular methodological approaches that are detailed in preceding chapters. Carefully tailored with Franco's own voice, this chronological and biographical account allows the reader to navigate through relevant aspects of Franco's life and the wider national and international context. Analyses on business settings and strategies, marketing research and Colombian politics as well as economics proliferate throughout this biographical study.
As a whole, this book will become an essential source for future researchers interested in Colombian business, entrepreneurial or political history of the second half of the twentieth century. By analysing and divulging knowledge otherwise kept by business leaders such as Napoleón Franco, this volume and the larger project in which it was conceived contribute to a better understanding not only of the history of marketing research in Colombia, but also of business strategies and entrepreneurs’ traits and economic behaviours in global perspective.
