Pre-modern commerce ran on reputation and custom, not advertising.

Evidence

Attention in our sense of it was not vital for commerce as it has become. In a manner that still holds for some professions, like medicine, or for small businesses, merchants typically relied on a good reputation or a network of custom to attract business. As for advertising, it “was thought to be the work of the vulgarian; it was also thought useless.” Nor did the State, with the occasional exception of particular kings and emperors—the first two Napoleons, for instance—find it useful to seek regular access to the public mind. Before the democratic age ushered in by the nineteenth century, most political powers had no need to influence the governed. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 81

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Milgrom law-merchant material on pre-modern reputation-based trade; connects nicely to trust and social-capital highlights. — connects to: The pre-eighteenth-century market functioned as a site of justice, not truth — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 321; Reputation, not third-party enforcement, governs diamond market transactions. — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 252; In protection markets reputation is the product itself, not the signal of it (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• In protection markets reputation is the product itself, not the signal of it #complicates (0.85)
• Reputation, not third-party enforcement, governs diamond market transactions. #corroborates (0.80) — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 252
• Pre-modern trust is anchored in local place rather than abstract systems. #expands (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 245