The Rise of Marketing and Market Research (Worlds of Consumption)

This volume serves up a combination of broad questions, theoretical approaches, and manifold case studies to explore how people have sought to understand markets and thereby reduce risk, whether they have approached this challenge with a practical view based on their own business acumen or used the tools of scholarship. Rhetoric about efficient markets is ubiquitous. The many products and businesses that have failed over the past centuries, however, tell a different story. Markets are inherently insecure, and they are made by individuals, businesses, and governments trying to understand and influence them, whether relying on practical experience, theoretical models, or new technologies. This activity is commonly called marketing and this book tells the fascinating history of modern marketing in the United States, Europe, and India Front Matter....Pages i-ix The Origins of Marketing and Market Research: Information, Institutions, and Markets....Pages 1-26 Selling Indian Indigo in Traditional and Modern European Markets, 1780–1910....Pages 27-47 “Cotton Guessers”: Crop Forecasters and the Rationalizing of Uncertainty in American Cotton Markets, 1890–1905....Pages 49-72 Mail-Order Doctors and Market Research, 1890–1930....Pages 73-93 Making Metropolitan Markets: Information, Intermediaries, and Real Estate in Modern Paris....Pages 95-125 Introducing Small Firms to International Markets: The Debates over the Commercial Museums in France and Germany, 1880–1910....Pages 127-151 Making the Ledgers Talk: Customer Control and the Origins of Retail Data Mining, 1920–1940....Pages 153-169 Markets, Consumers, and the State: The Uses of Market Research in Government and the Public Sector in Britain, 1925–1955....Pages 171-192 Mrs. Housewife and the Ad Men: Advertising, Market Research, and Mass Consumption in Postwar Britain....Pages 193-213 Subliminal Seduction: The Politics of Consumer Research in Post-World War II America....Pages 215-236 Gender Realignment: The Design and Marketing of Gas Stations for Women....Pages 237-267 The Bad Science and the Black Arts: The Reception of Marketing in Socialist Europe....Pages 269-293 Back Matter....Pages 295-312