Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965

Content: Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965 contains complete market research reports from the Ernest Dichter collection at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, DE. These documents are intended to "collect, preserve, and interpret the unfolding history of American enterprise." According to Adam Matthew, ­Dichter (1907-91) was "the era's foremost consumer analyst and market research pioneer." In their book Ernest Dichter and Motivation Research, editors Stefan ­Schwarzkopf and Rainer Gries refer to him as "the twentieth century's ultimate seducer." Trained in Vienna by a student of Sigmund Freud, Dichter was employed by such companies as CBS, Chrysler, Exxon, IBM, Mattel, and Philip Morris to research and report on consumer behavior and motivations.

Materials here include case studies, correspondence, memoranda, pilot studies, proposals, questionnaires, reports, and surveys, which are indexed by company, brand, and industry. Industries represented in the collection range from advertising to tourism, along with automobiles, beauty and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, television, and tobacco, among others.

The resource offers a gallery of advertising campaigns of companies that ­Dichter worked for; an interactive chronology highlighting milestones in consumer culture; case studies exploring key themes from reports; scholarly essays providing context for documents; brief company "biographies"; a glossary of marketing, psychology, and business terminology; and popular keyword, company, and brand searches. There are also relevant links to external sites; my search results produced listings from Marshall University and PBS, for example.

Usability: The file opens with a visually stimulating screen, half of which is occupied by a revolving carousel of advertising images (mostly from the 1940s and 1950s) highlighting sections of the database (chronology, essays, and case studies, and others). Above this is a toolbar with button links to the introduction (a comprehensive overview of the file), documents, industries, chronology, ad gallery, further resources, help, and advanced and popular searches. The further resources option"case studies, essays, teaching aids, business biographies, glossary, popular searches, and external links"are extremely informative.

Above the toolbar is a simple search box. Near the bottom of the page is a box asking, "Not sure where to start? Let us guide you through the American Consumer Culture collection," accompanied by a graphic of a 1950s egghead-type holding a magnifying glass. Even kitschier is the graphic of a 1950s coed on the right-hand side of the screen, highlighting quick links to explore the nature and scope of the resource as well as industries, essays, case studies, and an interactive chronology.

I read the introduction, including a lot of background about the database but was admittedly eager to see actual content, so I typed "cigarettes" in the search box. I received 282 results and could browse by document type, industry, or language. I selected "industry," and then clicked the subcategory "tobacco" in the following pop-up window. That netted 118 results, the first of which was a December 1959 "motivational research study of the Wills Company and its brands in relation to consumer desires in the Australian market." I clicked on the report title and a list of 83 instances of "cigarettes" in that document was returned, with images highlighting each occurrence of the word in the article.

Then a new simple search box popped up above the result list, labeled "search document." When I typed "cancer" in the updated query box, I received 18 full-text results with 53 hits. I selected the first result and a view of the full page of the report appeared with a new toolbar at top that let me navigate to "next hit" and "previous hit" (if I created an account, I could also add an image to My Lightbox for later use). Clicking on the page caused the image to zoom in, allowing for easy reading. This result stemmed from a group of questions outlining the problems and objectives of the research. One of the questions was, "What is the public attitude toward cigarette smoking and health? What is the consumer view of cigarette smoking and cancer publicity?" Forward and back arrows, along with the "previous hit" and "next hit" options make it remarkably quick and simple to sort through results, while the auto-zoom feature within the results permits easy browsing of the information.

Next I viewed the list of industries within the collection. One of the subcategories, "personal products," led me to a brief paragraph describing the kinds of documents relating to the industry in the database, along with a link to see those documents and another link to see ads in the file related to the industry. The description noted, "A large proportion of the reports....deal with issues of body odor and cleanliness... The Colgate Palmolive Peet Company...commissioned a large number of reports to determine contemporaries' attitudes towards bathing and soap." A search for "self image" located 1,229 results, including a January 1959 report titled "A psychological study of the deodorant market and opportunities for new product developments." I also searched for "Barbie," which produced 15 hits including a 1959 report that guided Mattel's marketing into a doll bonanza.

Verdict: This file delivers amply on the vendor's claim that it "provides a unique insight into the world of buying, selling, and advertising in pre- and post-war America." It does more than that, with sometimes chilling psychosocial analysis that will successfully serve researchers in the areas of psychology, history, business, marketing, advertising, consumerism, gender studies, ethnic and minority studies, communications, sociology, American studies, philosophy, terrorism, and politics.

This appealing database provides cultural insights into the American consumer boom dating from the mid-1930s through the sixties, with a few items dating from the twenties. The content comes largely from three special collections: the Hagley Museum and Library associated with the du Pont family in Delaware (http://www.hagley.org/); the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History at Duke University (http://library.duke.edu/rubens...); and The Advertising Archives, a major European-based collection (www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/). Papers from Ernest Dichter and his Institute for Motivational Research were donated to the Hagley Museum and Library by the Dichter family in 2007, and the Dichter collection of commissioned market-research reports for famous brands constitutes the bulk of the Ad Gallery source material in this database.

Under the title banner an easy-to-navigate ribbon features an introduction describing the nature and scope of the digitization project and the participating libraries. The Documents or Industries tabs lead to a variety of document types available for browsing, including market research proposals, pilot studies, reports, memorandums, letters, and supporting documentation. The thumbnail images presented open up to reveal detailed metadata and the full-page documents. There is also a Further Resources tab leading to case studies, biographies, popular searches executed by other users, and a glossary of marketing, psychology, and business terms. The Chronology presents brief statements and small-image thumbnails arrayed in a five-column display. Contents can be filtered by time period, or by selecting a particular color-coded category of interest, such as Businesses and Brands; only one filter can be applied at a time, however. A histogram-style time line aids further exploration of events, images, and news by particular year or decade. An accessible version of the chronology presents the same information as a scroll-down display.

The Ad Gallery feature has thumbnail pictures of hundreds of color advertisements from the era, each of which can be enlarged to show cataloging details (brand, industry, company, keywords, etc.) and a full-page view. PDF downloads of all database contents are available, and more information on the companies featured can be found in the Dichter reports. Because of the richness of the contents and the thoughtful design of the delivery options, this online resource will be of value to public and academic libraries that support business studies, and all students in consumer research and advertising fields.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students at all levels; researchers/faculty; professionals/practitioners.

Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965, an AM digital database, features valuable insight into people's purchasing behaviors and the impacts of marketing in the twentieth century. Most of the database content is taken from the Ernest Dichter Papers collection housed at the Hagley Museum & Library. To enrich this digitized collection, Adam Matthew has added a visually appealing chronology that provides context to advertising trends, an advertisement gallery and a glossary to assist with understanding the documentation. Although I would have liked to see a larger representation of market research, Dichter's collection of papers provides a useful overview of research on consumer behaviors and trends. Unlike many other market researchers of that time, Dichter explored the value of qualitative research data; he conducted in-depth interviews and went beyond surveys. The work that channeled out of his Institute for Motivational Research helped support advertisement campaigns for big companies such as Exxon, Mattel Toys and Frito-Lays.

Database users can gather most of the research content from the database's documents section. This provides original digitized materials including proposals, business correspondence, notes, letters, pilot studies, reports, supporting material and memorandums. To ease the search, these documents can be filtered by document type, industry and language. Once a document is selected, thumbnail images of document pages assist with navigation. The advertisement gallery also provides helpful thumbnail images that allow users to look through large number of advertisements with a simple glance and then select and enlarge those of interest. Filtering options in the advertisement gallery include industry, decade, image type and brand. I appreciated all of the eye-catching visuals of this database. Even the 'not sure where to start' introductory navigation overview link caught my eye, it was positioned within a caption next to a vintage cut-out of a man with a magnifying glass.

The vintage images match the aesthetic of the twentieth-century era. This database was visually enjoyable and informative for those who are interested in studying twentieth-century market trends, as well as some of the psychological motivations and behaviors of this era. The topics of reports range in product types and behaviors.

AM highlights topics such as "why women buy", "how to get more people to go to the movies" and "attitudes and motivations of the American voter". In the future, I hope this electronic collection continues to grow; part of Dichter's European collection of papers are accessible only through the University of Vienna and I would like to see this database become more robust with a few other marketing researcher collections.

With those critiques aside, I would recommend this database to any library or individual interested in the historical aspects of consumer culture, motivations and materialism.