How John Wanamaker Succeeded

03/24/2011 Orison Swett Marden

John Wanamaker was the Gilded Age genius who pioneered the department store, the posted single price for goods, the money-back guarantee, and the practice of giving away free products as a way to promote a business. He believed that commerce would save the world, writes Orison Swett Marden.

This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Keith Hocker.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.