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Wroe Alderson papers
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: University Archives and Records Center [Contact Us]3401 Market Street, Suite 210, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: University Archives and Records Center. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Wroe Alderson was a nationally known professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. Born in St. Louis on September 27, 1898, Alderson received his bachelor of arts degree from George Washington University before doing graduate work there, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at The University of Pennsylvania. Early in his career he worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Curtis Publishing Company, and (during World War II) the Office of Price Administration, the Bureau of Economic Warfare and the Foreign Economic Administration. After the war he founded the marketing and consulting firms Alderson and Sessions and Alderson Associates before coming to Penn in 1959. At Penn, Alderson was chairman of the Wharton School's Management Science Center and a member of the board of directors of the Marketing Science Institute.
Alderson was a president of the American Marketing Association, and a cofounder of the Marketing Theory Seminar and the Executive Seminar on Market Planning. His contribution to marketing theory was taking an interdisciplinary approach by attracting scientists from other fields, and borrowing techniques from other disciplines psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. Alderson died in 1965.
The Wroe Alderson Papers document Alderson's career in marketing in both the private sector and in academia. The collection contains material from both of his marketing consulting firms - Alderson and Sessions and Alderson Associates. The bulk of the records for Wharton document his work on the Sperry and Hutchinson Grant the Marketing Department received in early 1960s. The collection does contain additional material related to his professional work in marketing theory. Researchers should note that the collection does not contain any personal records for Aldreson.
The Wroe Alderson Papers have been organized into three series: Wharton, Marketing Firms, and Professional. All three series are arranged alphabetically.
The Wroe Alderson papers was received from the Wharton School's Marketing Department January, 1967.
Organization
- University of Pennsylvania. Wharton School. Marketing Department
- Alderson and Sessions (Philadelphia, Pa.)
- University of Pennsylvania. Wharton Center for Applied Research
Subject
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: University Archives and Records Center
- Finding Aid Author
- Joseph-James Ahern
- Finding Aid Date
- October 2013
- Access Restrictions
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Access to collections is granted in accordance with the Protocols for the University Archives and Records Centers.