ABSTRACT
In order to understand the emergence of a consumer-oriented capitalism, the role of market research is a key factor to be studied. Although market research is an integral part of modern marketing management, its history has been much less studied than, for example, the history of advertising, branding and retailing. The scientific methods that allowed market and consumer research to emerge were not developed by entrepreneurs or managers of commercial enterprises, but instead by social survey researchers interested in problems of unemployment, poverty, household expenditure and public health. While social scientists in Europe and America struggled to develop more sophisticated sampling techniques and data analysis methods, marketing practitioners often relied on more intuitive and descriptive methods which, combined with business experience, created market research practices that can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. During the early 1930s, the panel technique emerged in two forms: retail panels and consumer panels.
