Maslow’s model of needs: application to Cunard and White Star marketing communications between 1900 and the 1950s

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse Cunard’s marketing communications during a period of significant social and economic change. The intention is to show, firstly, how the company sought to meet and influence potential passengers’ understanding of their travel needs and, secondly, how these would be met. Design/methodology/approach The companies’ marketing communications are analysed using Maslow’s hierarchy. This is a well known descriptor of human needs. Findings Beyond a description and review of Cunard’s advertising, Maslow’s model of needs is shown to provide a rationale to the company’s approach. In particular, it gives an understanding of the continued, though changing, use of images of the ship to meet the needs of different cohorts of passengers. It shows how carefully constructed images in both word and picture assuaged passengers’ concerns over social needs and how the company promised to meet the highest needs, whether that be for the holiday maker or the emigrant. Research limitations/implications During much of the period under discussion, much of the advertising design work was done in house. Though none of these files have survived, other sources of information (for example, house magazines and internal correspondence) provide an understanding of Cunard’s attitude to its customers and the business opportunities it saw in a changing market. Where specific dates for documents are not available, a chronology of ship building and use has been applied. Practical implications This paper shows how a well-established model can be used in a different way, adding to the understanding of a company adapting to changing social and economic conditions. Originality/value To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first time that Maslow’s hierarchy has been used explicitly as a tool to analyse marketing and advertising material. Though the existing literature includes some discussion of shipping line posters visual content, there is little further discussion of their content or purpose in a changing social context. This paper provides a more structured analytical view.

Cruising through advertising: cruise ship brochure advertising in the late twentieth century

“…So too, is the publicity initially used to attract the consumer. Further, it will be illustrated how such publicity has from the early beginnings (Clampin and White, 2017;Gladden, 2020) become entrenched in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Before moving on to the discussion of the images, a very brief description of the selection of the print advertisements will be given.…”

“…Nor is it the intention to comment on brochures that either fall outside this timeframe or were offered to a different market. That has been covered in this journal by Branchik (2014), who provided a good general history of the marketing of cruise ships, Clampin and White (2017) with their survey on cruise ship poster advertising from the nineteenth century to the 1970s and Gladden (2020) provided a specific history of the adverting of White Star and Cunard from the turn of the twentieth century until the 1950s. These authors are joined by the likes of Papathanassis (2019), who provided a reflexive view of the overall cruise industry post 1980.…”

“…3. It is worth emphasizing that Clampin and White (2017) and Gladden (2020) have provided a thorough discussion on cruise ship advertising prior to the period under investigation. The images used in these two works, while similar, were produced by the lines for a different purpose.…”

Marketing communications in a time of change: mobility providers, safety and women during the interwar period in the UK and North America

“…In recent years, authors have focussed on either the ships (Quartermaine and Peter, 2006; Wealleans, 2006) or the passenger experience (Thomas, 1990; Edington, 2005) with few literature references to safety ( cf. Gladden, 2020). Besides the well-developed literature on the railways of this period, several authors have written on the development of railway advertising (their work is discussed elsewhere in the text).…”

The Learning Economy Regime

“…Rather, he proposed that it represents the "relatively more ultimate, more universal, more basic" aspects of the shared human experience (Maslow, 1987, p.70), or as Winston et al (2017, p. 298) phrase it, "cultures differ in their means but are similar in their desired ends." Maslow's idea of a needs hierarchy has proven influential not only in its original field of humanistic psychology but also in other areas of the social sciences, including: marketing (Gladden, 2020), systems research (Goede & Burken, 2019); finance (Li et al, 2019); quality of life (Nishi & Moakumla, 2018); governance (Sacchetti & Tortia, 2016); organizational behavior (Harvard, 2010); and the management sciences (McGregor, 2006). More recent empirical studies tend to lean towards Maslow's theory of a ranked hierarchy of needs (de Oliveira et al, 2020;Alajmi & Alasousi, 2019;Haider et al, 2018;Mahmudah, 2018;and Winston et al, 2017), 5 suggesting the theory accords in its broad outlines with common experience.…”