American Consumer Culture: Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965

This summer Penn Libraries added to its digital collections, American Consumer Culture: Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965, a rich trove of market research reports and supporting documents of Ernest Dichter, “the era’s foremost consumer analyst and market research pioneer,” and his Institute for Motivational Research. These materials derive from research commissioned by advertising agencies and global businesses from around the world. “Immensely influential, Dichter’s Freud-inspired studies put the consumer “on the couch” and emphasised the unconscious motives behind consumer behaviour. The Institute of Motivational Research employed trained social scientists and used established methodologies to conduct psychological research. Dichter’s career reached its peak after Vance Packard’s bestselling exposé The Hidden Persuaders (1957) presented Dichter as a mastermind manipulator who could exploit the emotions of consumers for the benefit of any advertising agency or big brand.” –from the Archive’s Nature and Scope section

With this resource communication students (as well as researchers of consumer culture, marketing, advertising, and psychology) can not only access final reports and pilot studies for the great campaigns of advertising’s golden age, but also peer behind the scenes via proposals and letters back and forth between the Institute and its clients. The campaigns under scrutiny cover a wide range of industries—automobiles,cleaning products, electronics, energy and utilities, food and drink, hair and beauty, personal products, tobacco, toys and games, and more.  Research on communication industries are also in the mix--advertising itself, broadcasting, media and publishing, and motion pictures. That the Institute employed a variety of research methods, some in their early stages of development, is especially appealing to social scientists who are able to isolate methods (interview, focus group, case studies, test, questionnaire, and diary) regardless of products or brands by a simple key word search strategy. Of course, one can also search the archive by titles, brand names, companies, and commissioners. Searches can be restricted by industries, document types (letters, reports, etc.), or language.  Bear in mind the scope of this resource is not limited to the United States as Dichter had offices in Paris, Rome, Zurich, and Frankfurt.

I did a brand search on Volvo and retrieved two reports from 1969: Why Does an American Buy a Volvo? A proposal For a Motivation Research Study; and How To Make It Even Better—A Motivation Study of Ten New Opportunities for Marketing Volvo in the USA.  Keywords assigned to the latter report are: automobile, marketing, car, brand choice, reputation, price, pricing, word-of-mouth advertising, corporate image, market segmentation, symbolism, name.

Political campaigns also called on Dichter and his people so I thought I'd try a quick “anywhere” search on the word “presidential.”  29 results appeared including reports on what can be done to make more Americans vote (1952), the personality characteristics of undecided voters (1969), and FDR’s radio history (1945) which contains a table illustrating the parallel between the number of radio sets in use and the number of ballots cast in presidential elections from 1920-1940. 

This is really an interesting resource to browse (check out the Ad Gallery) and if you are going in for something specific you may be richly rewarded without having to travel to the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington where Dichter's papers reside.

 

June CommQuote

Here in Virginia Woolf's TO THE LIGHTHOUSE is a wonderful physical description of advertising--in the process of being created, in this case, on a billboard. At first I was disoriented because James Tansey's thoughts are elsewhere (welcome to Virginia Woolf) and suddenly the circus literally unfolds. He's on a walk with Mrs. Ramsay:

...He felt many things, something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasons which he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded, walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship, he felt capable of anything and saw himself--but what was she looking at? At a man pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening red and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals, lions, tigers...Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read out how it...'will visit this town.' It was terribly dangerous work for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like that - his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.

"Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity. 

"Let's go," he said, repeating her word, clicking them out, however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let's all go to the circus."  
--p. 11, Harcourt edition, 1955

New at Penn: WARC

Penn Libraries has recently added WARC to its rich collection of business intelligence resources. WARC is an international marketing database that includes over 6,000 marketing case studies as well as trend analysis, research reports, and other business intelligence information,  For media industry researchers it is chock full of useful and timely reports and data.

WARC stands for World Advertising Research Center. It has been around since 1985 and is also the publisher of International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research and International Journal of Market Research (available from the Penn Libraries e-resources). If you do literature searches on media effects, persuasion, or communication campaigns it is not unusual to pull up articles in the advertising and marketing realm in journals such as these. Let's just say these folks care about persuasion like nobody's business (pun intended).

WARC's Data section contains advertising expenditure data from 80 global markets, a comparison of global media costs (compare costs by market, medium, target audience and time period), Adspend forecasts for 12 key countries, and a wide range of media usage statistic, including TV viewing data from over 70 countries and time spent by media comparisons (television, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines and cinema) in 10 non-US markets.

WARC's Topic section is useful for sifting out soft drink and automotive reports from reports in Media and Entertainment, or Telecoms, to mention the categories of most interest to communication researchers. 

The Industry Trends section has a Media/Tech category where you can find such articles as Cloud Gaming: What the End of the Console Means for Gamers, Brands and the Global Gaming Industry (August 2012). 

Mobile Media Across Europe

The Internet Advertising Bureau Europe has released a white paper on mobile penetration in Europe. From the Introduction and Methodology of Mobile Media: An IAB Europe White Paper:

Mobile internet advertising spend during 2010 – when advertising revenues generally fell - was worth €710 million, more than double its 2009 total of €279 million. This report, covering 19 European countries, presents detailed research findings behind these figures. It springs from IAB Europe’s mission to prove the value of the market through research and education.

This report is based on a variety of sources that are the most legitimate to use in each local market and bring the potential, audience and usage of the mobile internet. The objective of this report is to provide local marketers with the most accurate mobile data on each European market. In countries where several sources are available, we chose the most recognised one from the local players. We used one source in countries where there is no other data available.

Introducing adViews!

Great news! Duke University's TV commercial collections spanning from the 1940s to the present, have gone online. From the website:

"The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s. All of the commercials held in the DMBB Archives will be digitized, allowing students and researchers access to a wide range of vintage brand advertising from the first four decades of mainstream commercial television."

AdViews is a collaborative project between the Digital Collections Program and the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, as well as a number of other groups, at Duke University.

Ads can be searched by keywords, company name, product, and by date. There are also broader categories to browse such as "Health and Beauty," "Transportation and Travel," "Food and Beverage," among others.

Note: To view the ads one needs to open them in iTunes. That appears to be the only option.

New Reference Book Arrivals

New in ASC Reference:

Encyclopedia of Political Communication, edited by Lynda Le Kaid and Christina Holtz-Bacha (Sage Publications, 2008). Key themes are: Biographies, Books/Film/Journals/Television, Democracy, Democratization, Education and Nonprofit Organizations, Elections, Government Operations and Institutions, Legal and Regulatory, Media Events, Media Outlets and Programs, Role of Media in Political Systems, News Media Coverage of Politics, Political Affairs, Theoretical Approaches,Types of Political Media, Political Attitudes, Political Campaigns, Political Events, Political Groups and Organizations, Political Issues, Political Journalism, Theoretical Concepts,
Women in Politics

Information Ethics and Security, edited by Marian Quigley (Information Science Reference, 2008). Includes over 150 contributors from 19 countries on topics such as computer crime, information warfare, privacy, surveillance, intellectual property, information ethics, and education; over 2000 article references.

Sage Handbook of Public Opinion Research, edited by Wolfgang Donsbach and Michael W. Traugott (Sage, 2008). Includes "The Public and Public Opinion in Political Theories" by Vincent Price, the opening article in Part I (History, Philosophy of Public Opinion and Public Opinion Research). Other sections: The Development of Public Opinion Research, Theories of Public Opinion and Change, Dynamics of Public Opinion, The Design of Surveys, Measurement of Public Opinion, The Status of Public Opinion Research, Uses and Effects of Public Opinion Research, Special Fields of Application . "The most comprehenisve book on public opinion research to date." --Robert Ting-Yiu Chung (WAPOR)

Historical Methods in the Social Sciences, edited by John A. Hall and Joseph M. Bryant (Sage, 2006). Four volume compendium of reprints of foundational articles and chapters on methods in historical sociology.

The Language of Advertising, edited by Guy Cook (Routledge: Major Themes in English Studies, 2008). A four-volume ‘mini library’ of some of the most seminal and controversial works on the language of advertising. Sections include advertising and society, cross cultural advertising, gender and sexuality, case studies of products and campaigns, multimodal forms of advertising, and brands and branding.

The Sage Handbook on Grounded Theory, edited byAntony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz (Sage, 2007). "Grounded Theory is by far the most widely used research method across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas, including social sciences, nursing and health care, medical sociology, information systems, psychology, and anthropology...gives a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of Grounded Theory, taking into account the many attempts to revise and refine Glaser and Strauss original formulation and the debates that have followed." --publisher's website

Journalism, edited by Howard Tumber (Routledge, 2008). Another four-volume mini-library in the Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies Series, this one devoted to the social, political, cultural, and practical understanding of journalism. The volumes are designed to be a library reference of key theoretical, empirical, and historical writings on journalism derived from previously published journals and books. "Has Communication Explained Journalism" by Barbie Zelizer (first published in the Journal of Communication, 1993) appears in Volume II.

And two books by Howard Becker:

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis (University of Chicago, 2007). Second edition of this classic, of sorts.

Telling About Society (University of Chicago, 2007). "...should carry a warning label: 'Do not start reading unless you're prepared to spend the next few hours having your horizons broadened and your understanding of social sciences deepened. Further, prepare to abandon any belief that insight and originality are incompatible with clarity, accessibility, and plain good writing." --Larry Gross, University of Southern California

Aspen Institute Reports

It's good to keep an eye out for Aspen Institute reports from its Communication & Society Program section. The program convenes leaders in the areas of information and communication for roundtable discussions to explore the political, economic, and societal impact of communications and information infrastructures. It also promotes research and distributes conference reports. Recent (2007) reports include: Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift; The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level; The Future of Video: New Approaches to Communications Regulation; Unmassing America: Ethnic Media and the New Advertising Marketplace. These reports are for sale at a reasonable price at the site but I discovered they are actually free on the open web. Just google a chunk of the title and they will come up in a full pdf.

August CommQuote

Bob Garfield of On the Media interviewed Vinicius Galvao, a reporter for Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper, about the city's recent ban on outdoor advertising.

"Bob Garfield: I've seen photos of the city, and it's amazing to see this sprawling metropolis completely devoid of signage, completely devoid of logos and bright lights and so forth. What did Sao Paulo look like up until the ban took place?

Vinicius Galvao: Sao Paulo's a very vertical city. That makes it very frenetic. You couldn't even realize the architecture of the old buildings, because all the buildings, all the houses were just covered with billboards and logos and propaganda. And there was no criteria. And now it's amazing. They uncovered a lot of problems the city had that we never realized. For example, there are some favelas, which are the shantytowns. I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw it before, just because there were a lot of billboards covering the area....It's weird, because you get lost...you don't have any references anymore...My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is art deco building that was covered..."
--excerted from Adbusters (September/October, 2007)

Special Issues Roundup

The Journal of Mass Media Ethics (Volume 22, Numbers 2&3, 2007) is devoted to Moral Philosophy under the editorship of Christopher Meyers. Articles tackle John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism, ethical reasoning, virtue ethics applied to journalists,Immanuel Kant and transparency, and Immanuel Kant on moral education.

Continuum (Voume 21, Number 2, June 2007) features Mobile Phone Cultures. Its issue editor is Gerard Goggin.

A special issue of The Journal of Advertising (Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2007) is on Social Responsibility in Advertising, guest edited by Michael J. Polonsky and Michael R. Hyman. Included are articles on the effects of warning-label placement in print ads, the use of humor to mask deceptive advertising, and consumer responses to corporate social responsibility initiatives.

The Asian Journal of Communication (Volume 17, Number 2, June 2007) is devoted to Media and politics in Post-handover Hong Kong, guest editors: Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee.

But as we approach the dog days of August...the Canadian
Journal of Communication gets the award for running the most summer-sea-breezy piece to cross my desk. Authored by Jaigris Hodson and Phillip Vannini of Royal Roads University, it's titled Island Time: The Media Logic and Ritual of Ferry Commuting on Gabriola Island, BC.

Abstract
Drawing upon ethnographic data collected among residents of Gabriola Island, British Columbia, this article analyzes the meanings associated with the movement of the MV Quinsam—the primary means of transportation onto and off the island—and with the ritual of ferry commuting. By focusing on the logic of the ferry as a medium of communication and on the ritualistic aspects of commuting and by combining a symbolic interactionist perspective with the media theory of Harold Innis, the authors reflect on how the Gabriola Island ferry shapes islanders’ sense of time and thus experiences of lived culture.

Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study; Pew Reports

The Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study 2007 is the follow-up to Arbitron’s 2003 study which examined the size, characteristics, and behavior of movie theater audiences. In this new report, Arbitron focuses on the moviegoer’s relationship with cinema advertising and evaluate its ability to influence young and affluent consumers.

And from Pew:

Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions What Americans Know: 1989-2007, a report from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.

A Quarter's Worth of News Coverage A new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism which finds that the four-year-old war in Iraq dwarfed all other topics in the U.S. news media during the first three months of 2007. However, more than 80% of war news focused on Americans -- those shaping policy, fighting or affected at home. Only about one-in-six stories was primarily about Iraqis, whether their government, their lives, or their casualties. The 2008 presidential campaign ranked second in coverage with news focusing primarily on Democratic candidates.

Also from PEJ, don't forget about their annual State of the News Media reports. State of the News Media 2007 has been out since March and is the fourth edition of this reputable report on the health and status of American journalism. (Earlier reports have been highlighted in a previous post.)

Two Reports on Children: Violent Entertainment , Food Advertising

Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children: A Fifth Follow-up Review of the Industry Practices in the Motion Picture, Music Recordings, and Electronic Games. A Report to Congress, April 2007 Federal Trade Commission, 138 pages. The first of of these reports was issued in 2000. All previous reports are also available.

Food for Thought: Television: Food Advertising to Children in the United States, released by The Kaiser Family Foundation, is the largest study conducted of TV food advertising to children. Content analysis of TV ads & detailed data on children’s viewing habits for an estimate of the number and type of TV ads seen by children of various ages. Besides the full report which is available at the site, you can also find news releases and an overview; also a webcast of when the report was released at a forum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, March 28, 2007. It featured U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, food industry leaders, health officials and consumer advocates.

2007 Entertainment, Media & Advertising Market Research Handbook

Now in its 9th edition, The 2007 Entertainment, Media & Advertising Market Research Handbook combines current market statistics with trend analysis and marketing strategies, providing a comprehensive and reliable guide for strategic planning and market development across all media platforms. Published by the market research firm Richard K. Miller & Associates, this 230+ page handbook offers the latest data on the major advertising and media corporations, consumer uses of media (including multitasking), advertising by medium, political ad spending, cable and satellite services, consumer magazines, the internet, mobile media, newspapers (including online, college and free metro dailies), radio (including satellite and internet), and television (including online, mobile, and digital), filmed entertainment (in theaters and video sales and rentals), live performances and events, recorded music, and video games. There is an extensive section on marketing which includes branding, entertainment, and virtual worlds. Specific ethnic markets focused on are: African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American; also the Gays and Lesbian market, and markets divided into age groups (Millenials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers) and gender. There is also a section on faith-based media.

The handbook is available in the ASC Library as a print out. The ASC community can request the pdf version from me.