Jan L. Logemann
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226660011
- eISBN:
- 9780226660295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226660295.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The professionalization of marketing research and efforts in “consumer engineering” drew on new insights in fields from social psychology to communication studies, which thrived at mid-century ...
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The professionalization of marketing research and efforts in “consumer engineering” drew on new insights in fields from social psychology to communication studies, which thrived at mid-century because of transatlantic knowledge-circulation. This chapter follows the exemplary transatlantic careers of members of the “Vienna school of market research.” The group emerged from the Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle, a social research institute associated with the University of Vienna during the early 1930s. Next to Paul Lazarsfeld, the group most prominently included the sociologist Hans Zeisel as well as the motivation research specialists Herta Herzog and Ernest Dichter. Their careers suggest a more transnational understanding of midcentury American consumer capitalism with European – in this case particularly Viennese – influences shaping marketing practices, which consumer historians still often regard as a quintessentially “American” phenomenon of psychological consumer manipulation. Transfers took place on several levels and this and subsequent chapters will analyze the role of individual émigré scholars, of the professional networks they formed, as well as the research concepts and methodologies they developed between Europe and the United States.Less
The professionalization of marketing research and efforts in “consumer engineering” drew on new insights in fields from social psychology to communication studies, which thrived at mid-century because of transatlantic knowledge-circulation. This chapter follows the exemplary transatlantic careers of members of the “Vienna school of market research.” The group emerged from the Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle, a social research institute associated with the University of Vienna during the early 1930s. Next to Paul Lazarsfeld, the group most prominently included the sociologist Hans Zeisel as well as the motivation research specialists Herta Herzog and Ernest Dichter. Their careers suggest a more transnational understanding of midcentury American consumer capitalism with European – in this case particularly Viennese – influences shaping marketing practices, which consumer historians still often regard as a quintessentially “American” phenomenon of psychological consumer manipulation. Transfers took place on several levels and this and subsequent chapters will analyze the role of individual émigré scholars, of the professional networks they formed, as well as the research concepts and methodologies they developed between Europe and the United States.
