History

Market For Goods
British manufactures attempted to take over the Indian market on the other hand Indian weavers and craftsmen, traders and industrialists resisted colonial controls, demanded tariff protection, created their own spaces, and tried to extend the market for their produce.
(a) Methods used by producers to expand their markets :
(i) Advertisement : Advertisements make products appear desirable and necessary. They try to shape the minds of people and create new needs. From the very beginning of the industrial age, advertisements have played a part in expanding the markets for products, and in shaping a new consumer culture.
(ii) Labeling : When Manchester industrialists began selling cloth in India, they put labels on the cloth bundles. The label was needed to make the place of manufacture and the name of the company familiar to the buyer. The label was also to be a mark of quality. When buyers saw ‘MADE IN MANCHESTER’ written in bold on the label, they were expected to feel confident about buying the cloth. Labels also carried images and were very often beautifully illustrated.
(iii) Calendars : By the nineteenth century, manufacturers were printing calendars to popularise their products. Unlike newspapers and magnazines, calendars were used even by people who could not read. They were hung in tea shops and in poor people’s homes just as much as in offices and middle-class apartments. And those who hung the calendars had to see the advertisements, day after day, through the year. Even in these calendars image of gods and goddesses were used to attract the consumers.
(iv) Images of gods, goddesses and personages : Images of Indian gods and goddesses regularly appeared on labels. it was as if the association with gods gave divine approval to the goods being sold, was also intended to make the manufacture from a foreign land appear somewhat familiar to Indian people. Like the images of gods, figures of important personages, of emperors and nawabs, adorned advertisements and calendars. The message : if your respect the royal figure, then respect this product; when the product was being used by kings, or produced under royal command, its quality could not be questioned.
(v) Advertisement by Indian producers : When Indian manufacturers advertised the nationalist message was clear and loud. If you care for the nation then buy products that Indians produce. Advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of Swadeshi.