B2B or B2C? Dutch approaches towards marketing and the consumer, 1945-1968, with particular attention to Heineken's Brewery

In this article I analyse how Dutch companies approached the consumers and
marketing during the years 1945-1968, a period during which the Netherlands
became a ‘consumer society’. In the first part I examine articles in the Dutch
journal Tijdschrift voor Efficiëntie en Documentatie (ted, or Journal for Efficiency
and Documentation), a leading management periodical. This examination
shows how new ideas from abroad were taken up and disseminated in the
Netherlands by both management consultants and large producers of consumer
goods such as Unilever and Philips. In the second part of this article I take
a closer look at Heineken’s brewery, drawing on the company’s archives.
Heineken closely followed the ideas afloat at the time and put them into
practice. However, the Heineken case also shows the different approaches
necessary for business-to-consumer (b2c) and business-to-business (b2b)
relationships. The second type of relationships deserves more attention from
historians.