Selling owner-occupation to the working-classes in 1930's Britain

Peter Scott (p.m.scott@reading.ac.uk)
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Peter Scott: Centre for International Business History, University of Reading

No em-dp2004-23, Economics Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Reading

Abstract: The 1930s witnessed Britain's first major boom in working-class owner-occupation. Purchasers typically came from cramped, rented, inner-urban accommodation, and, only a few years previously, would not have considered the possibility of buying a new house. Such perceptions were transformed by an aggressive marketing campaign by the building societies and building industry, to create a new mass market for owner-occupation. During the 1930s they developed a number of extremely sophisticated marketing strategies, including strong elements of `lifestyle marketing', to transform the popular image of a mortgage from `a millstone round your neck' to a key element of a new, suburbanized, aspirational lifestyle. This both contributed to the fastest rate of growth in working-class owner-occupation during the twentieth century and had a substantial impact on consumption patterns for families who moved to the new estates. After briefly discussing the causes and dimensions of the housing boom and the extent of working-class participation, this article examines the marketing campaigns launched by the building societies and the building industry to entice working-class customers. The analysis draws both on supply-side evidence - advertising material and business archives - and demand-side data - a qualitative database of 58 accounts by working-class people who moved into owner-occupation during this period, assembled from oral history archives, published and unpublished autobiographies, and other sources (hereafter Life Histories Database) together with a quantitative database of working-class family budgets.ii The paper also examines the ways in which opportunistic marketing contributed to an eventual crisis in the sector. The 1930s

Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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