An image from the archive

Adam Matthew Publishers (now owned by Sage) has just come out with an incredible electronic resource that offers digitized versions of all the market and consumer research reports compiled by the famous (and notorious) motivation researcher Ernest Dichter between 1935 and the 1980s. Readers of Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders and Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique will be familiar with Ernest Dichter and the influence he had on American and global consumer culture. Anyone researching postwar cultures of consumption will find this an amazing resource for their research.

The value of these consumer research reports lies in the fact that they were written during the postwar years and thus give a reflection of American and European consumer capitalism as it unfolded after the Second World War. There is not a single product category that is not represented in this collection.

Libraries will have to subscribe to the resource (more detailed information is here). The press release is here.

My own contribution to the this research resource are five case studies which subscribers will have access to: ‘Ernest Dichter and Motivation Research’; ‘The Psychology of Consumption’; ‘Automobility as Consumption’; ‘Chocolates and Confectionary’; ‘Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products’.