CREDIT FACILITIES AND THE GROWTH OF CONSUMER DEMAND FOR ELECTRIC APPLIANCES IN THE 1930s.

This article assesses the role played by the electricity undertakings in promoting the growth of demand for electrical appliances in the home. The focus is on the credit facilities the undertakings offered, and the extent to which such facilities stimulated demand for electric consumer durables. As the British electricity industry saw it at the time, the overriding consideration in the domestic market was to boost the consumption of electricity in the home. Revenue from electric lighting was considered to be insufficient; new consumers had to be added and existing consumers had to be persuaded to use more electricity. This article has analyzed the contribution of deferred payment schemes to the growth of the market for domestic electric appliances in the 1930's. The industry's own benchmarks have been used, that is, the contribution of the schemes to increased consumption of electricity in the home and, underlying this overriding consideration, the roles of the schemes in overcoming the cost and inertia constraints the industry believed it had identified as potential constraints on market growth. It is clear that these schemes did help to boost increased use of electricity in the home and that they did play a role in overcoming cost and inertia constraints. However credit was not solely responsible for the growth of the market for domestic electrical appliances, and thus by definition for the growth of domestic power consumption. In this sense, the industry was only partly correct. The important consideration was the relative costs of using electricity as against gas in the home.