History
Soap manufacturer Benjamin T. Babbitt in the 19th century was one of the first known, though not the first ever, people to offer free samples of his products.
Innkeepers are portrayed offering free samples in the 14th-century poem Piers Plowman: "Tauerners ‘a tast for nouht’ tolden the same" (Innkeepers said the same thing, 'A taste for free!').
In 1987 C.A. Courtesy became the first demonstration company to secure exclusivity with a retailer.
Read more about this topic: Product Sample
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)