Abstract
By the 1930s, American business had begun to take consumer research seriously. “Probably at no time in t he la st decade has actual knowledge of consumer buying habits been as vital to successful and profitable retailing as it is today,” a New York Times writer observed in 1931, reporting on new efforts to analyze customer sales data.1 Enterprising merchants had always sought to attune themselves to the whims of their customers; however, during the early decades of the twentieth century, new social-scientific methods emerged as promising alternatives to informal observation and intuition. The concept of market research, separate from earlier cost-analysis studies of distribution and merchandising, took on special luster as American retailers sought to direct their promotional efforts with greater accuracy and predictability. By relying on “a ‘hunch’ and a ‘guess,’ ” the New York Times reporter noted, “stores in countless instances have advertised merchandise, say on Thursday, when even trifling analysis would show its best consumer response on Tuesday.”2
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Notes
Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York, 1989), 14, 161.
See also Joseph Turow, Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Chicago, 1997), chap. 2.
For an overview of early consumer marketing, see Douglas B. Ward, “Capitalism, Early Market Research, and the Creation of the American Consumer,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1, no. 2 (2009): 200–223.
On the development of “scientific” advertising research, see Pamela J. Kreshel, “Advertising Research in the Pre-Depression Years: A Cultural History,” Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising 15, no. 1 (1993): 59–75.
For connections between consumer research and social-scientific inquiry during the 1920s, see Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of the Mass Public (Cambridge, MA, 2007).
On the development of market segmentation in mid-twentieth-century America, see Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003).
On the development of database marketing and transactional data, see Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Boulder, CO, 1993); and Turow, Breaking Up America.
Mark Andrejevic, “The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, no. 2 (2002): 230–48.
On the history of consumer credit before 1940, see Lendol Calder, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit (Princeton, NJ, 1999);
Martha Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991);
and William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993).
See, for example, Dean Ashby, Credit Sales Promotion and Customer Control, mimeograph (St. Louis, MO: National Retail Credit Association, [1936]), 1–4, located in University Library, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
JoAnne Yates, “From Press Book and Pigeonhole to Vertical Filing: Revolution in Storage and Access Systems for Correspondence,” Journal of Business Communication 19, no. 3 (1982): 20;
see also, JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore, MD, 1989), 56–63;
and JoAnne Yates, “For the Record: The Embodiment of Organizational Memory, 1850–1920,” Business and Economic History 19 (1990): 172–82.
William H. J. Taylor, “Credit Office Efficiency,” Credit World 8, no. 12 (August 1920): 10.
See Kardex (Towanda, NY: Kardex Company, [192?]); The Age of Vision in Business Affairs (Towanda, NY: Rand Kardex Service Corporation, 1926); and Visible Records: Their Place in Modern Business (Buffalo, NY: Remington Rand, 1930). See also Frederick W. Walter, The Retail Charge Account (New York, 1922), 158–66.
G. L. Harris, “What Progress in Management?,” Executive 1, no. 5 (November 1927): 10.
Fred E. Kunkle, “The Buyer’s Strike and the Credit Manager,” Credit World 9, no. 10 (June 1921): 21;
L. M. Crosthwaithe, “Constructive Credit Granting,” Credit World 9, no. 5 (January 1921): 10–11.
David J. Woodlock, “A Dual Responsibility,” Credit World 14, no. 10 (June 1926): 3.
Daniel J. Hannefin, “Building Prospect Lists—A Continuous Process,” Credit World 17, no. 6 (February 1929): 12.
Mark Lansburgh, “Promoting New Business,” Credit World 16, no. 1 (September 1927): 9.
J. G. Pattee, “The Value of Retail Credit as Viewed by a Retail Merchant,” Credit World 14, no. 7 (March 1926): 6.
Robert Ross, “Why a Charge Account?” Credit World 15, no. 11 (July 1927): 28.
John T. Bartlett and Charles M. Reed, Credit Department Salesmanship and Collection Psychology (New York, 1932), 245.
Robert B. Gile, “Developing the Retail Store’s Best Market,” Credit World 18, no. 4 (December 1929): 5.
Gile, “Developing the Retail Store’s Best Market,” Credit World 18, no. 5 (January 1930): 14.
William E. Glass, “Sales Promotion Thru the Credit Department,” Credit World 18, no. 4 (December 1929): 9.
See Gile, “Developing the Retail Store’s Best Market,” Credit World 18, no. 4 (December 1929): 5–6; and Dean Ashby, “More Business from Present Customers,” Credit World (July 1935): 30.
Roland Marchand, “Customer Research as Public Relations: General Motors in the 1930s,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 85–109.
George D. Adams, “New Methods of Account Promotion,” Credit World 17, no. 7 (March 1929): 16.
Gile, “Developing the Retail Store’s Best Market,” Credit World 18, no. 4 (December 1929): 6–7.
Joseph M. Juran, “Universals in Management Planning and Controlling,” Management Review 43, no. 11 (1954): 748–61;
see also Juran, “The Non-Pareto Principle; Mea Culpa,” Quality Progress 8, no. 5 (1975): 8–9.
Hart Vance, “Catering to Human Feeling,” Credit World 19, no. 4 (December 1930): 33.
Harry Jeffrey, “The Credit Man and His Department,” Credit World 17, no. 10 (June 1929): 30.
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Lauer, J. (2012). Making the Ledgers Talk: Customer Control and the Origins of Retail Data Mining, 1920–1940. In: Berghoff, H., Scranton, P., Spiekermann, U. (eds) The Rise of Marketing and Market Research. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137071286_7
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