| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Editorial note: Following JAH policy, Joanne Meyerowitz did not participate in the decision to review this book or in the choice of a reviewer.

Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell. By Nancy F. Koehn. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001. 469 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-57851-221-2.)

This engaging series of case studies offers a panoramic view of entrepreneurship in Britain and the United States over the last three centuries. It also contains a suggestive argument; Nancy F. Koehn makes a strong case that gaining consumers' trust lay at the core of successful business strategy. Although Koehn does not fully explore the implications of this point for business history, she does provide rich material to those who study consumption, capitalism, and entrepreneurship.

Koehn tracks the path of six entrepreneurs using three historical cases (Josiah Wedgwood, H. J. Heinz, and Marshall Field) and three more recent examples (Estée Lauder, Howard Schultz of Starbucks Coffee, and Michael Dell). Each chapter presents a different individual and firm. Koehn deftly weaves together historical context and biographical detail to narrate the rise of businesses as diverse as eighteenth-century ceramics workshops and twentieth-century computer retailers. She uses all of these cases to illustrate several factors that, she argues, explain the success of particular companies. These factors include rapid social and economic changes, entrepreneurs' sensitivity to the effects of those changes, and firms' ability to build outstanding reputations among consumers.

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