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Amanda McLeod The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne, Carlton, Australia Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine motivational research (MR) – the most maligned and misunderstood branch of market research. It argues that MR has been too easily dismissed by researchers. In so doing, they have ignored a potentially significant insight into the post World War II consumer’s motivations and domestic life. Design/methodology/approach – This paper utilises previously unexamined primary source material to examine David T. Bottomley’s construction of MR. Findings – By looking at in-depth market research studies, a greater, more rounded picture of the postwar consumer can be gained. Throughout the 1960s, some market researchers turned to consumer motivations to uncover the psychological dimensions of purchasing behaviour by determining the symbolic meanings goods had to their consumers. Rather than viewing consumer behaviour as predictable by factors such as economic class, motivational researchers held that consumers are multi-faceted subjects and life-stage and attitudes to colour are important factors influencing consumer behaviour. Research limitations/implications – Research that considers consumer motivations should not be so easily dismissed as deceptive or corruptive research without genuine merit for historical research. Nor should Dichter’s style of research be considered to be the only version of MR. Originality/value – Previous scholars have largely ignored the significance of market research to the development of the consumer market and the construction of the postwar consumer. Given the dearth of scholarly examinations, the paper is based almost entirely on primary research data. Keywords Advertising, Australia, Consumer behaviour, Consumer psychology, Motivation (psychology) Paper type Research paper
Journal of Historical Research in Marketing Vol. 1 No. 2, 2009 pp. 224-245 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1755-750X DOI 10.1108/17557500910974596
Introduction Motivational research (MR), warned Henry Epstein, the Deputy Chairman of the Australian Consumers Association (ACA), was merely “pseudo-scientific hokus pokus” designed to target the consumer to “persuade him to buy what he does not need, for money he hasn’t got, at prices he can’t afford because of advertising he doesn’t believe in” (Epstein, 1962, p. 4). This paper examines this most maligned and misunderstood branch of market research[1]. Australian postwar prosperity was to be based on a manufacturing economy and Australia followed the lead of the USA in the pursuit of a consumer capitalist society. Marketing would ensure that consumer demand kept pace with the ever accelerating productive capacity. Yet by 1955, after wartime shortages had been satisfied, the fear The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and guidance in preparation of this paper, and David T. Bottomley. Any mistakes that remain are the author’s own.
that markets could potentially become saturated saw marketers employ techniques of increasing sophistication to manage consumer demand. By the mid-1960s, market research had gained a new active role in anticipating the consumer’s changing requirements in addition to the passive role of simply finding existing preferences (Finley, 1962). As the market became more competitive – as brands competed against one another for a dwindling market share – some market researchers began to recognise the limitations of direct interviewing and observation of consumers (McLeod, 2007). Consumer research, by this period, was being used by some researchers to sort consumers not only in respect to brand buying, but also by intelligence, lifestyle and social group. The trick which market research needed to perform was to find ways to uncover and cater to consumer preferences, without conflicting with their prejudices. When psychological profiles were uncovered, the “marketing man” was in a better position to increase his product’s (or his company’s) reputation or to gain from a competitor’s unpopularity. Preferences and prejudices made up the personal interpretation of a product. Bottomley (1968), Australia’s foremost proponent of MR and the major subject of this paper, believed that market research determined “the ways in which their perceptions have been conditioned through their upbringing or a product’s advertising and marketing history [. . .] affect their likes and dislikes”. Unlike traditional research, MR needed to perform a dual role: to test both the economic and the psychological appropriateness of a product. Put simply, MR found “buying reasons” by asking “why” consumers acted the way they did, by determining what motivated them (Bottomley, 1959, 1963). Where market research sought to predict brand preferences, MR might also concern itself with an additional measure, the symbolic meanings brands had to consumers. “It seeks to relate behaviour to underlying processes, such as people’s desires, emotions, and intentions”, explained Bottomley (1959, p. 88). This innovative branch of market research also included market segmentation theory that was concerned not only with the meanings of products but also a description of the type of people attaching such meanings to products. The Australian Sales Research Bureau (ASRB), under the direction of Bottomley, employed in-depth questioning and included analysis of lifestyle factors in addition to the more conventional demographic indicators such as income. Bottomley held that consumers were complex subjects and that traditional research provided an incomplete picture of consumers. This paper will argue that examinations of the postwar consumer which dismiss the contribution of MR ignored important dimensions of consumer behaviour. The academic analysis of MR is still in its infancy and the scholarly community is continually divided over its central tenets. By focusing on the work of Bottomley, this paper offers an Australian perspective to the growing international literature which shows that there was more to MR than Dr Dichter’s method based on psychoanalysis. Bottomley’s work, for example, uncovered life-stages of consumers and provided significant insights into market segmentation. It also uncovered important connections between specific life-stages and consumer attitudes toward colour, described herein with examples from research on the Australian paint industy. So, what was MR? In his examination, Fullerton (2005, p. 141) observes that “the quintessence of MR was the utilization of recently developed methods and insights
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from the social sciences to better understand buyers’ motives through better understanding their attitudes”. Thus, the clue lies in the link between understanding consumer motives and attitudes. While the methods adopted by motivational researchers to understand and predict consumer behaviour were numerous, its essence still lay in answering “why”. The purpose of MR was to find “buying reasons”, as Bottomley (1959, p. 88) explained, to explain why people behave as they do “in relation to a particular advertising, marketing, or communications problem”. Summing up the essence of MR more succinctly, Bottomley explained: “If the purpose of the investigations is to arrive at an understanding of buyer behaviour [. . .] it can be classified as motivation research” (Bottomley, 1964, p. 99; emphasis in original). Tadajewski (2006, p. 436) confirms this reading, arguing that MR’s “main focus is on ‘why’ questions, with a primary interest towards establishing a better understanding of why consumers engage in certain types of behaviour, and why they view particular products in the manner that they do” (Stern, 2001). Critical considerations Australian scholars have largely ignored the development of market research. If writers do mention its development, they do so almost exclusively by its relationship to advertising (Hutchings, 1996). The work of Reekie (1991), Oakman (1995) and McLeod (2007) are exceptions, for all acknowledge the important role played by market research in postwar consumer capitalism and the development of it as a discipline in its own right. The treatment of the motivational branch of market research has been even more dismissive: “motivational research never really took over”, writes Irving (1991). “Market research and other techniques, including a good deal of reliance on commonsense and feel, continued to inform the advertisers” approach’ because, she explained, there is “little evidence that these techniques are less successful than motivational appeals”. MR has been ignored as the most extreme example of marketers’ desire to tap into the consumer’s unconscious influences on behaviour. Irving’s statement about motivational appeals highlights the assumption that MR’s main aim was to find ways to subconsciously influence consumer behaviour through advertising. The dissemination of the ideas of American social critic Packard (1957) has done much to reinforce this view. In his seminal expose´ of MR, The Hidden Persuaders, Packard argued that all research based on consumer motivations was driven by the sinister desire to discover ways to influence consumer behaviour without their knowledge (and often against their better judgement). Yet Fullerton’s (2005, p. 141) examination of the MR literature in 1954, found “only one mention of subliminal messaging” and even that does not suggest that it was possible to subconsciously manipulate consumer behaviour. Obrec (1999) suggests that motivational researchers in the 1950s also “viewed consumers as creatures often influenced by erotic impulses”. If the results of MR are reduced to subliminal advertising or appeals based on erotic impulses, then it did indeed fail to take over (Mackay, 1998). Yet other forms of MR – based largely on psychological theories – including consumer lifestyle studies, market segmentation, and colour theory, continue to inform marketers’ approaches. In some cases, their work
combined all three. Bottomley, in his 1960 “Housewife’s Day” study, which will be examined later, uncovered three stages through which housewives passed and revealed their attitude to colour during each of those stages. While the international literature has been somewhat more complimentary, much of it has also tended to dismiss MR as being a less than serious attempt to understand consumer behaviour: Today [. . .] motivation research (MR) is usually remembered as entertaining but archaic Freudian silliness as embodied in bizarre blather from Ernest “Mr Mass Motivations” Dichter about wrinkled prunes, the paranoid effusions of Vance Packard (1957) and others [. . .] about the terrible threat of subliminal sleaze, and the like (Fullerton, 2005, p. 134).
Yet, as Fullerton rightly acknowledges, “All of the above are misleading. The stories distort and minimize a major stream of market research – some elements of which are still fundamental to market research and to current conceptualisations of consumer behaviour” (Fullerton, 2005, p. 134). Even if MR is taken seriously, it is still usually associated with Dichter. Although Stern (2004, p. 165) had a change of heart: “my earlier research [1990] [. . .] is more aimed at justifying his neglect” turning instead to “evaluating his contributions and ongoing influence”, she insisted that Dichter invented MR. Indeed, Schwarzkopf (2007, p. 221) notes, “He advanced to become a symbolic figure of his time, who served as a projection screen for public criticism of marketing and postwar consumer culture”. Dichter played his own part in becoming a brand and he had no qualms about referring to himself as the “father of motivational research”. More recently, however, others have argued that Dichter’s version of MR, which focused on psychoanalysis, was but one branch of MR and “psychology had several quite distinct and seemingly irreconcilable schools” (Fullerton, 2005, p. 141; Schwarzkopf, 2007). The ambiguity of the term “MR” has, in part, been responsible for its historical neglect and the differing analyses by historians. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, not Dichter, should be seen as the founder of MR according to Fullerton (2005); yet Stern (2004, p. 166) has argued that “Lazarsfeld’s purely statistical approach was fundamentally different from Dichter’s interviews, and the dry empirical style completely unlike Dichter’s style of presenting research findings as copy slogans”. But as Tadajewski (2006, p. 433) uncovered: While motivation research is frequently seen to be the product of Ernest Dichter, the reality is that by the time Dichter arrived in the United States motivation research was already well underway, having been developed in an embryonic fashion by Paul Lazarsfeld in the 1930s (Fullerton, 1990).
My intention in this paper is to take up the challenge posed by Fullerton (2005, p. 134) – to examine MR “as the people who developed and used it defined it, not as critics characterised it”. Thus, it is Bottomley’s characterisation of MR that is the major focus of this discussion. Bottomley’s adaptation of MR was from a broader stream than the one usually associated with Dichter’s search for erotic impulses. Even though it can be argued that Dichter himself has been too harshly judged and too quickly dismissed, it is important to acknowledge that “the kind of colorful, intuitive, imaginative, entirely qualitative interpretation associated with Dichter was neither representative nor typical of MR, which represented serious social science” (Fullerton, 2005, p. 141). The narrower conception of MR diminishes the possibility of multiple configurations of the
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technique which could, to varying degrees, incorporate sociological, psychological and anthropological theories. A (scientific) motivational research man For Bottomley, 1948 had been a turning point. He had just finished his second degree, a Bachelor of Education from the University of Melbourne, for which he received the Cohen Prize[2]. His first degree was in chemistry, mathematics and physics. Bottomley saw his first market research brochure in the same year: “There’s a buyer’s market around the corner”. “When I first saw that brochure, I thought it merely presented a tautological statement. Of course, markets had buyers! Sellers too!” (Bottomley, in McNair, 1978, p. 53; Scott, 1980). By the end of the year, Bottomley’s brother Alex, who was running a small-scale private security firm, asked him: “What’s the use of an education degree?” Bottomley replied: “A capacity to tackle a wide range of problems as the course had included psychology, statistics, comparative education and philosophy”. “Well then”, his brother exclaimed, “You had better come and start solving problems for me!” (Bottomley, in McNair, 1978, p. 53). And so, a lifetime in market research began. Bottomley left Australia to hitchhike and travel around Europe after a short stint working for his brother. Arriving in England, he started Manchester’s first market research office. But he did not stay in Manchester long; it had taken him six months to sell his first survey – to a Manchester advertising agency. After job-hunting, and applying for ten or 12 jobs advertised in The Times, he was “simultaneously appointed to two positions” in London. One was a teaching position in a secondary modern school, the other was as research manager for McCann Erickson Advertising. “As the salary offered by McCann’s (£600 per year) was twice that of the teaching position”, explained Bottomley, “I turned again from the academic path to the commercial”. When he protested after a year that he did not have enough work to do at McCann’s, they increased his annual salary to £750 (Bottomley, in McNair, 1978, p. 53; Stern, 2001). As market research had been first applied to the commercial sector to gage audience circulation for media outlets (Hurwitz, 1985; Waller-Zuckerman, 1989), it is no surprise that it was within that industry that Bottomley first applied his research skills. It was probably at McCann’s that Bottomley was first introduced to MR. By 1955, according to Packard, the McCann “agency in New York had five psychologists manning a special motivation department” and had even taken to using depth-probing on its own staff (Packard, 1957, p. 31). On his return to Australia in 1953, Bottomley was invited to head the ASRB by the advertising agency United Service Publicity. In May 1964, the ASRB directors, including Chairman and Managing Director Bottomley, bought the remaining shares and ASRB emerged as a fully independent market research company. Bottomley’s stress on conventional scientific methodology, coupled with psychological and psychiatric theory, suggests that he did not subscribe to a particular branch of MR. In 1960, Bottomley visited over 100 market research firms, including Dichter at his “hunting lodge” in Croton on Hudson, Cheskin and Alfred Politz in New York, and others in Chicago and Britain. He cited a range of motivational researchers, including Alfred Politz, Harry Henry, and S.H. Britt, in his 1964 revision of Introduction to Market Analysis. Bottomley was Henry’s predecessor at McCann Erikson
in London and Dichter subcontracted work to ASRB. This aspect of Dichter’s business, and the dissemination of his ideas in this way, does not seem to have been considered when assessing his relative failure in Britain (Schwarzkopf, 2007), for example, but it would provide an interesting avenue for further research. “Present day market research, in which the psychologist, as well as the statistician, is able to participate, tackles this problem of exploring market segmentation through preliminary studies in the field of meaning” (Bottomley, 1964, p. 104). Bottomley himself had been trained in these dual fields. ASRB employed a combination of psychologists and statisticians to conduct research surveys. Ray Isherwood, for example, spent ten years working as a practising psychologist before joining ASRB. Colin Phillips, who held a diploma in applied psychology and an honours degree in physics, field supervisor Prue Larnach, research assistant Lesley Gould, and Ian Munro, who had been specifically employed as a psychologist, were all part of the ASRB stable. ASRB’s major clients included Shell, Arnotts, Associated Pulp and Paper Mills, A.V. Jennings, Cadbury, Fosters, media organisations such as the Melbourne Age and Reader’s Digest, and various government departments. By October 1963, ASRB had 27 full-time staff and a field staff of around 200. In the same year, its “Brand Index” interviewed 24,000 people and its mail panel members tested “five tons of food products” (ASRB, 1961-1965, p. 3). For Bottomley, market research was ultimately about serving the consumer’s interest by keeping the costs of doing business down for the benefit of the consumer. “For many goods”, he explained, “the price paid by the end-consumer is about double that of the cost of production”. Market research should reduce the costs associated with advertising, producer and distributor margins, and handling, storage and transport costs, he felt. In some cases without determining the market potential of the product and the symbolic meaning of goods “it would be wasteful to increase the rate of advertising expenditure” (Bottomley, 1962a, p. 1). Bottomley’s belief that market research would result in more efficient business practices with less responsibility placed on consumers to carry the burden of “unnecessary” costs was his guiding force. Bottomley’s “humanism” drew him towards the branch of market research that focused on consumer motivations and viewed consumers as fully rounded human subjects “by constructing psychological profiles of users as users” (Bottomley, 1962b, p. 6). Bottomley, who headed ASRB for 28 years, would later become a controversial “consumer rebel” in the mid-1960s as the first Chairman of the Victorian Government’s Consumer Protection Council (CPC). In addition, Bottomley was also a founding member of the Victorian Consumers’ Association, a founding member and fellow of the Market Research Society of Australia, a fellow of the Advertising Institute of Australia, and a fellow of the Australian Institute of Management (Bottomley, 1970; Saurin, 1967). Bottomley’s attempts to establish professional societies and consumer groups should not be too easily dismissed as mere self-promotion. These endeavours were to raise his professional profile, in part efforts to give the profession of market research legitimacy and ethical standing. But they should also be read as an effort to share knowledge in a quest for economic efficiency. Perhaps, most important was his desire
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to “give something back” and to counter the potential unethical activities of unscrupulous marketers. Depth probing MR was able to uncover strikingly different buying reasons from those uncovered by more conventional market research. Roy Morgan, Head of one of Australia’s largest research organisations and most well known for the Morgan Gallup Opinion Poll, did not move into psychographics, colour, or MR because he considered consumers to be transparently predictable and rational. Morgan employed “activation” research that sought to determine what triggers “activated” consumers to purchase by asking consumers direct questions. Morgan’s characterisation of the consumer was largely based on economic class. Bottomley, by contrast, saw the consumer as multi-levelled, one who had competing desires and one for whom product ownership had distinct meanings. Like others who advocated MR, ASRB found that when consumers were asked about their intentions, their behaviour was unpredictable and did not correspond neatly to the answers that they gave. More was needed than directly asking consumers what they wanted (often referred to as “nose-counting”). The researcher needed to find out not only “who they were” but “why” they acted in the way they did (ASRB, 1968). Bottomley’s application of MR, influenced by psychologists based in the USA and Britain, confirmed or dispelled common assumptions about consumers themselves and the consumer market. Women were assumed to be the major consumers of household appliances and thus became the target of the marketing of such products. The historical scholarship, too, has tended to focus on the behaviour of the female consumer (Hutchings, 1996; Johnson, 1996; Kingston, 1994a, b; McLeod, 2003; Reekie, 1993; Sheridan et al., 2002). But prior to the use of market research, the gendered assumptions relating to product usage were largely untested ones. Lawn mowers, for example, were thought to be only used by men and initially all research for them was targeted at men (RMRC, 1962-1963). ASRB, by surveying more widely, uncovered women who used lawn mowers and men who were making important decisions in the traditional female consumer markets such as household electrical appliances (ASRB, 1961b; British Paints, 1972; RMRC, 1962-1963). ASRB divided the standard categories – age, class and sex – into sub-groups relating to social background in order to “classify” consumers by their psychological relationships to product usage. At any one time, a person had multiple psychological profiles, for example: a father, club member, husband, and so on. The psychological profiles were not just only limited to each role that a consumer actually played, but also considered the roles the interviewee felt he should play (Bottomley, 1962a, 1978-1979). Three main advocates in the USA: Cheskin, Martineau and, of course, Dichter, helped to raise the profile of MR and disseminate ideas to Australian researchers. While Packard put them all in the same basket, each employed their own version of MR. Cheskin at the Color Research Institute in Chicago was responsible for popularising the use of colour in influencing consumer attitudes, particularly in the area of packaging. Martineau, Director of Research and Marketing for The Chicago Tribune, made important contributions to the discipline with his work on the notion of
social class and spending behaviour. And Dichter applied Freudian psychoanalytic techniques to buyer behaviour. Martineau (1957, pp. 122-3), for example, found that middle-class women were happy to buy electrical appliances at discount houses because they “felt they could not “go wrong” with the nationally advertised names”. But women were far more careful when it came to buying furniture, as brand names were less of a deciding factor. Martineau concluded that women needed the “support of the store’s taste” to guide their decision because their “taste is on trial”. Symbolic patterns of consumption offered greater insight into buying behaviour than income alone because such research concerned itself with the meaning of consumer purchases. Martineau (1957, pp. 122-3, 1958) believed that “the individual’s consumption pattern actually symbolize[d] his class position”. Australian market researcher Kenneth Tolhurst argued that the MR which Dichter inspired “tended to fade away after the mid-sixties”. Researchers moved away from in-depth questions but continued to use group discussion and other techniques to counter “faulty recall” (Tolhurst, 1979, p. 6). Bottomley, however, continued to use MR’s in-depth questioning methods as a research factor and found multifaceted individuals, in contrast to Morgan’s far more one-dimensional consumers. By including lifestyle factors, and by re-interviewing respondents, ASRB uncovered a more complex and complicated consumer, one for whom goods had symbolic meaning. Bottomley (1967, p. 107) argued that it was possible to produce a “psycho-sociological map of the community in terms of its interest in the products being investigated”. Packard (1957) condemnation of the “depth manipulators” who “try to invade the privacy of our minds” had significant support in Australia; it is likely that his legacy has been influential in dismissing it as a legitimate historical resource. Dr Henry Epstein, the Deputy Chairman of the ACA cited earlier, believed that MR performed an immoral act. “For to pry into the very soul of the consumer in order to find the weakest spot for sales attack (and marketers are not choosy which spot it is) is not a commendable activity” (Epstein, 1967). What is evident, however, is that both Packard and Epstein feared MR because they believed it could unlock the consumer’s psyche and used to manipulate behaviour. This possibility also led to the interest in MR amongst practitioners. Cheskin (1959) noted that after the publication of The Hidden Persuaders, motivational researchers “sprouted by the dozen”. Both “friends and critics of Dichter often worked on the assumption [. . .] that his skill and unethical manipulation of consumer fears and desires allowed Dichter to enjoy global success” (Schwarzkopf, 2007, p. 221). In Australia, commentators claimed it was fashionable for a company to say it used MR, even if its methods suggested otherwise (Larbalestier, in McNair, 1978). Despite the novelty factor of MR being the “next big thing”, others, particularly market researchers themselves, were not so quick to conclude that they had the key to the “intuitional navigators” that influenced consumer behaviour. “This may look easy but do not believe it”, warned Australian researcher Gibbons (1965, p. 19). “We must remember”, he continued, “that giving a motive a label does not mean we understand it or can predict what it will lead to” (Gibbons, 1965, p. 19). Such interpretations were deceptively simple. In fact, the deeper researchers probed, the more complex and harder to predict they considered the consumer. Those interested in
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motivations made imprecise claims about their ability to understand behaviour – let alone influence it. Gibbons (1965, p. 19) wrote: “Psychologists can be of great help to manufacturers who wish to find some basis for favourable consumer discrimination between their products and the opposition’s”. American marketing psychologist Katona (1960, p. 262) wrote that although Packard’s view had wide resonance, he found it largely unappealing, primarily because “motivation research practitioners are not capable of discovering people’s hidden fears and desires”. Bottomley (1964), too, considered that regardless of whether or not MR was able to find ways to subconsciously manipulate consumer behaviour, the central premise of the discipline was to explain “why” consumers acted the way they did, not to manipulate them. Even Dichter himself was somewhat tempered in his view of MR, arguing that “Motivational thinking, even when applied to commercial problems, does not motivate people, talk them into buying things that they do not need, by twisting their unconscious” (Dichter in Tadajewski, 2006, p. 458). Despite the critics’ widely publicised fears, motivational researchers made it clear that they did not claim to be able to unlock all the secrets about consumers. They merely pointed to where the secrets may lie. The problem was far from solved when researchers found out why consumers did what they did. Gibbons stressed the importance of combining psychological and statistical findings, but, he bemoaned, “even this is barely enough” (Gibbons, 1965, p. 19; Katona, 1960). The more motivational researchers probed consumers, the more the differences between them became apparent and thus uncovered more problems for marketers than MR could solve. Though two products may be identical, apart from their brand names, they may differ in their sales rates because, according to Bottomley (1962a, p. 1), “the associations developed in selling the brand name have created different product images in customers” minds’. Bottomley (1963, p. 63) found, “the car or the washing machine, or even something as simple as a cake of soap, is not used or thought about by people in the way in which a scientist in his laboratory might comprehend it”. To understand the market, ASRB believed marketers needed to discover the symbolic meanings of products to their consumers. The “field of meaning” of a product may be far removed from its intrinsic characteristics. In order to fully understand the buying situation, Bottomley (1963, p. 64, 1964) urged marketers “to observe the relationship between the person and the object, and the psychological and sociological groups to which the person belongs”. Rather than averaging consumers’ answers to questions, a more sensible way involved bringing out differences between individuals. Motivational researchers believed if they treated the respondent like a human being, they could understand purchasing decisions and the real meaning of products (Bottomley, 1959, 1979). Citing a well-known example of consumer resistance to instant coffee in the USA, Bottomley (1959, p. 89) explained that the use of a “projective” test revealed more in-depth attitudes than standard interviewing alone. Housewives were shown two identical shopping lists, except that where coffee was listed one read: fresh coffee; and the other stated: Maxwell-House instant coffee. Where the standard test had revealed to interviewers that consumers did not want to buy the product because “they didn’t like the taste”, the projective test revealed that they actually believed that “housewives who used instant coffee were considered lazy and lacking in household pride”
(Tadajewski, 2006). Bottomley proposed that conventional and MR be conducted together to get a fuller picture of consumer behaviour. In one of his own tests, Bottomley (1959, pp. 89-90) interviewed women about cosmetics and the perceived social class attached to certain brands. He concluded that: It is possible to have two lipsticks comparable in price and quality, but one brand will have gained associations which make it acceptable to a wider group in the community than the other. The manufacturers of the cosmetic to which is ascribed the narrower social appeal have an advertising task in altering the “personality” which their brand has gained.
Do-it-yourselfers Writing of the 1960s’ counter-culture revolution in the USA, Frank (1997) argued that advertisers exploited the notion of “cool” appropriating the term to the industry’s advantage by packaging it as “hip-consumerism”. McQueen (2006, p. 92), too, has shown how marketers adopted terms such as “glamour” in a similar manner to promote and “add value” to mass produced products, “to redeem standardised commodities by promising the qualities that mass production erased”. Australian marketers also exploited the “DIY ethic” to sell their products by convincing consumers they could “do it themselves”. The growth of do-it-yourself (DIY) home decorating throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a response to various market changes, including rising labour and material costs, labour and material shortages, and increased leisure time (McLeod, 2007). Pessimistic attitudes towards economic prosperity, and the threat of war during the early 1950s, had contributed to consumer acceptance of the mass market. The ideology of DIY, Murphy shows, was promoted as a “welcome indicator of self-help” and more than simply “making-do” (Murphy, 2000, p. 92; Dingle, 2000; Madigan and Munro, 1996; Oliver, 1999). Consumption, therefore, was not just about purchasing happiness – it was also an expression of self-sufficiency and protection from economic instability and insecurity. It was not the mere acquisition of consumer goods that promised happiness, but the self-reliance that these goods could enable the homemaker to achieve. Thus, the DIY ethic was consistent with the consumerist ethic being promoted in the postwar period. The construction of homes by owner builders, Dingle suggests, was “seen to be primarily a male achievement” because the attributes required – strength, skill and stamina – were “essentially masculine virtues” (Dingle, 2000, pp. 57-76). Similarly, DIY interior decorating can be understood – by considering the findings of market and MR – as primarily a female achievement. The DIY ethic placed homemakers in the positions of experts and created new consumer markets for paint, wallpaper and tiles and, as O’Callaghan (1993) notes, it even achieved a “certain glamour”. Advertisers capitalised on this movement and exploited the “DIY” slogan in advertising copy and encouraged and congratulated homemakers on their efforts. Laminex (1961, p. 65) makers of surface laminate, for example, told female do-it-yourselfers: “Clever you [. . .] a professional’s work and you did it all by yourself”. But it was not until motivational researchers probed the depths of the consumer’s psyche that they uncovered the gender divide and the “do-it-yourself market segment”. The more they uncovered, the more there was to find out.
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The housewife’s lifestyle In 1960, the ASRB asked Melbourne housewives to reconstruct a “time and events picture” of their day, in order to fill “yet another gap in the jig-saw of the complete knowledge about one of advertisers” best customers – the housewife’[3]. The “Housewife’s Day” study, the first of its kind conducted in Australia, asked women – who were full time housewives – to account for their activities in the era of labour-saving devices. The report outlined the pattern of the housewife’s week – Sunday to Saturday – in detail (ASRB, 1960). Bottomley stated it “proved surprisingly different from what everyone – or at least every layman – had imagined to be true and typical” (ASRB, 1961a, pp. 2-3). Information on the day’s details – shopping, meal preparation, housework, leisure, travel and most importantly, contact with the media – was ascertained in quarter-hour intervals. To build psychological profiles of the housewife, Bottomley allowed consumers’ own value judgements to be incorporated into the findings. Where Morgan had asked whether consumers had seen a particular advertisement or campaign, Bottomley also wanted to know if they liked it or not, what had motivated them to hold that opinion (why), and what meaning the product had for them. Such information enabled further market segmentation and allowed marketers to determine if the target audience was the one responding most favourably to the product by buying it. The psychological study presented three different lifestyle stages (potential market segments) which a housewife moved through and which, in turn, affected the meaning consumer goods had. The first lifestyle was one where the housewife was the mother of young children and as a result was “firmly bound to her house for most of the time”. If she was not physically restricted to it, her thoughts were connected to it. The second lifestyle began when children started school and the housewife started to move outside the home and into the community. In the third phase – when her children had left home – she “achieved an equilibrium with society”. Bottomley’s initial interest had been sparked by the “Chicagoland woman and her food stores” study conducted by Martineau at The Chicago Tribune in 1959 (Shapiro, 1959). The study was concerned with “the meaning housewives attach to food preparation” and found it was “possible to classify women according to whether they gained their major pleasure in preparing food from the satisfaction it was likely to give to others”, to themselves, or whether they just wanted to get quickly out of the kitchen’ (Bottomley, 1964, p. 107). As Bottomley saw them, surveys such as these had a dual purpose, which could not be delivered by those that did not consider product meanings. On the one hand, they allowed marketers to accurately define market potential, and on the other – and most significantly – to adequately understand consumer attitudes. Thus, from MR’s point of view, a housewife was not “just a housewife” but a particular “type” of housewife and, thus, a particular market segment. The ground-breaking report was divided into two sections – the first part detailed the housewife’s daily activity; the second part concerned her contact with the media, and what household chore or activity she was doing at the time in order to best target the marketing campaign. When the results were compared with a study carried out in London in 1956, Melbourne’s pattern had many similarities “with regard to a wide range of activities, especially the average length of working day, [and] time spent on laundry and housework” (ASRB, 1960, pp. 3-4).
To estimate the market for household furnishings, ASRB’s “Housewife’s Lifestyle” study sought to determine the meaning furnishings had for the housewife depending on her life-stage. In the first stage of her life as a “housewife”, when she was more “emotionally” attached to the home with small children, strong colours were less appealing, while other colours were considered, “‘clean colours and others’ are not so ‘clean’” (Bottomley, 1964, p. 106).
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235 Colour preferences New interest in strong colours occurred during the second stage, when she began to spend less time “emotionally” attached to the home and formed new associations or re-established those she had before she was married. Her adolescent children may also have influenced colour choices, having preferences for new and bright colours. In the third stage, she no longer sought emotional warmth from furnishing colours. Such changes in the meaning of colour, Bottomley argued, altered with “changes in the housewife’s life style [and] should be included in studies relating to demand for furnishings” (Bottomley, 1964, 1968, pp. 64-5). ASRB’s colour tests sought to test “the acceptability of patterns and colours among any desired classes of consumers in relation to any desired types of products”. Such tests took into account factors such as consumer satisfaction, the type of handling the product would get, and the surroundings in which the product would be used, to “greatly increase accuracy in selecting winning colours and patterns” (ASRB, 1963, p. 4). Personal preferences for paint colours were, of course, not unknown prior to market researchers uncovering them. Boyd (1952, p. 6), Australian architect and social critic, wrote in 1952: “Color taste is bound up with associations. Some people get the idea that certain hues are their lucky, or un-lucky, colours because of some past events in their lives”, MR sought to make sense of consumers’ preferences and prejudices for particular colours. “Paint and, specifically, colors are directly related to psychological moods”, explained Dichter (1964, p. 143). Bottomley (1975, p. 40) found when he extended his research into outdoor advertising: certain colours such as dark blue, dark brown, black and purple were regarded by consumers as depressing when used as background colour on posters. When shown a photograph of a “rather run-down shopping street” one respondent remarked “It’s dirty and brown and has horrible looking colours”, and another replied: “It’s only a grey colour. There is no friendliness about the picture”. Colour, Bottomley concluded, could also contribute to the ambience of the city. Tram advertising – if the whole tram was gaily painted – was especially well received (Bottomley, 1975, p. 47). But using colour as a marketing tool was a delicate balancing act. If consumers felt that too much money had been spent on packaging and thus not getting value for money, such techniques could be self-defeating (Bottomley, 1969). Though Boyd celebrated the number of new colours that had been developed in the postwar period, he was somewhat annoyed with what he saw as the trivial, but overpowering, influence that emotions played when it came to choosing paint colours. He stated exasperatedly: “Few women can avoid judging the colour of a paint in the light of how they would look dressed in it. There is no logic to any of this, and no scientific answer to it” (Boyd, 1952, p. 6, 1954). According to Boyd, though fashion colours in paint did not change as quickly as they did for clothing, they were “just as
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dictatorial and insidious. Colors do not matter”, he declared. “What matters is where you use the colors”. But for motivational researchers, consumer behaviour was logical if consumers were asked the right questions. “Choosing an interior colour scheme was a very serious and complicated business during the 1950s”, writes Australian historian O’Callaghan (1993, p. 174). “Advertisements for the major paint companies focused as much on the psychological effects of colour as on the particular qualities of their product”. Marketers, aided by technological advancements that had produced an endless choice of paint colours, exploited the appeal to fashion and the psychological dimension of colour during the 1950s and 1960s. As McQueen (2006, p. 99) shows, “Once plastics replaced linseed oil as the carrying agent in house paints in the early 1950s, the hardware industry chorused ‘don’t sell paint, sell colour’”. There was an important economic reason for the commercial sector to focus on colour. For the paint industry, the pent-up demand that occurred in the immediate postwar period was in the area of maintenance, which had been neglected during the war years. Subsequent paint usage was not only stimulated by advertising campaigns that highlighted new products and methods which had been recently developed, but also by stressing “colour as a fashion” (Department of Trade, 1957, pp. 13-4). But for the amateur DIY painter, who tended to buy the well-known nationally advertised brands, colour, more than price, was a more important determining factor for purchase. The availability of ready-mixed paints and the rising cost of labour and paint were considered the major factors influencing the rise of “amateur” painting. Australian DIY painting was considered close to the US rate of 75 per cent. Paid professionals did only 25 per cent of painting, and DIY painting was expected to increase further if working hours decreased and labour costs continued to rise (Department of Trade, 1957; Gregory’s Guides and Maps, n.d; Watson Sharp, 1953)[4]. Armed with the new research findings, paint companies capitalised on the “DIY” movement. Lewis Berger (Cleary, 1956, pp. 50-1), for example, set up “Mayfair Colour Centres” in every capital city, and “Paint brushes and rollers became as much part of a home’s accessories as lawn-mowers and garden forks had been”. One of the most masculine commodities? Australian market researchers “discovered a more enigmatic feature of the market place”, argued Oakman (1995, p. 41), “where women had an important and persuasive influence over even the most masculine of commodities, such as house paint”. But it was not women’s involvement in decisions that surprised ASRB (1961b). Rather, it was men’s influence that was most striking. Researchers, according to Reekie (1991), stated that women exerted important influences over the purchase of paint. Berger & Sons positioned men and women equally as paint consumers. But men and women were concerned with different qualities of paint. It was argued that because women spent so much time in the kitchen – “almost a third of her life” – considerations about the weatherproof durability was only of secondary importance. “Women have always had an enthusiasm for colour”, wrote Cleary, and “Berger decided to sell colour to them”. According to Cleary (1956, pp. 50-1), the science of colour dynamics was not new, but without the additional data that only MR could provide, one that was not fully understood. More research was needed to fully realise the market potential for paint.
On first examination, paint does appear to be marketed as a masculine commodity. ASRB’s “Who decides?” survey confirms this assumption. Husbands, in 63 per cent of cases shopped for paint, in 49 per cent decided to buy it and in 60 per cent chose the brand. Women, on the other hand, made 22 per cent of the purchasing and 17 per cent of the brand decisions (ASRB, 1961b). However, the study does not differentiate between interior and exterior paint, and does not make any claim about who actually did the painting. Eighty-one per cent of consumers knew exactly what they were going to buy before they went to buy the paint – the highest response of all commodities surveyed by ASRB. British Paints Limited was awarded Hoover’s Domestic Medallion for marketing in 1972 for its promotional campaign which ran between 1969 and 1971. The survey conducted by Frank Small and Associates in 1969 was the first comprehensive examination of the paint market by British Paints designed to evaluate “all aspects of the consumer market for paint” (British Paints, 1972; Bates, 1978). The survey found that growth in the paint market had become static with strong competition occurring between brands, and that because of the infrequency of purchase, brand recall was “surprisingly low” and recall of advertising details was “extremely low”. Consumers had generally become apathetic towards paint advertising (British Paints, 1972). The survey found that paint companies were guilty of “me-too advertising” and “failed to project a distinctive, exclusive, or unique selling proposition for any brand”. Over time “the advertising degenerated into an ineffective generic industry approach with total emphasis on ‘easy to apply’ ‘convenient’ ‘dries quickly’ and ‘the brushes wash clean in water’” (British Paints, 1972, pp. 59, 63-5). Indeed, British Paints (1965a, p. 3) “Nu-Plastik” advertisement told consumers: “It’s easier, it’s quicker, it’s better, it’s fantastic, and it dries in 15 minutes, brushes wash up under the tap, and needs no sealers or undercoats”. Dulux “Lo Gloss” acrylic house paint could be used on timber, metal, brick and fibro, so you save time on preparation. British Paints (1965b, p. 3) “4 Seasons Plastic High Gloss” stressed “speedy, easy clean-up with water after painting”. Taubmans (1964) “High Gloss” was best for quicker and easiest-brushing. Dulux (1964a, p. 73) “Timbaglow” “dries hard and dust free in as little as 2 hours and can be recoated in 4-8 hours”. With Dulux (1964b, p. 82) “Spring” “brushes and rollers wash out under the tap”. All paint companies stressed that painting was easy and consumers would be finished painting more quickly with their product. A further frustration for paint manufacturers was what seemed like a consumer prejudice against painting. Manufacturers of building materials capitalised on this to gain market share in a competitive market. Comalco (1964, p. 81) asked: “Who wouldn’t trade this [. . .] [painting a weather-beaten window frame] For this? [a new aluminium window]”. After all, aluminium windows “never need painting or expensive maintenance [. . .]. They never rust, crack, rot or warp” (Comalco, 1964). Another assumed the homeowner would rather be playing golf than wasting weekends painting. A Dulux Hi-Gloss advertisement, which suggested consumers would prefer to go ten pin bowling than paint their houses, clearly targeted the female consumer. Ten pin bowling, which had been recently introduced into Australia, was being promoted as a sport for both men and women, but the hand featured in the Dulux advertisement is clearly that of a married woman (Dulux, 1964c, p. 81; McLeod, 2006).
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British Paints was surprised to find in 1969 that women had a “greater familiarity with paint companies than men”. This is important because women had not been assumed to be the major proponents of “DIY” painting. The company found that their largest number of consumers were in a higher age and income bracket than the vast majority of “DIY” painters who were under 35 years of age. British Paints (1972) had positioned itself to target the 50 per cent of the population that was under 25 and 80 per cent that earned less than $4,000 per annum. The ultimate outcome of the study was to position British Paints at the DIY market and project: a “young, vital, innovator look for the company”. The advertising campaign was devised by the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, well known for its use of MR, to promote the individual “personalities” of each product in the British Paints range with the tag line: “Trust British Paints? Sure Can!”. One of the most significant aspects of the survey was the finding regarding choice of colour and decision to paint interiors. In all age and class groups, women were more influential in the final say and increasingly were the “purchaser [. . .] and actual painter of inside work”. The survey confirms what I have observed to be true in advertising, that: “the interior was the female prerogative and responsibility, while the exterior was generally left to the male” (McLeod, 2007, p. 141). Women were more concerned with, and aware of, the after-use attributes of interior paint. Men on the other hand, were more interested in functional differences of, and characteristics between, types of paint (British Paints, 1972). With only a few exceptions, ASRB’s “Who Decides?” study confirmed that the end-user of the product was the person who decided to buy[5]. The British Paints survey, too, concluded that the decision to purchase a specific brand came down to the individual who purchased the paint. In the case of exterior paints, men made the majority of purchases alone. When it came to interiors, the survey found that women considered their husbands to have very little influence over the necessity of painting; in only 6 per cent of cases were husbands thought to say “some of the interior needed painting” (British Paints, 1972). Frank Small and Associates concluded that the reason the rooms most frequently painted were the kitchen and the bedroom, was because they were the two rooms where women were more “ego-involved” (British Paints, 1972; Dichter, 1964). This reading is indicative of MR. Conclusion Ditcher, during his 1958 Australian visit, told reporters that women had moved through three phases during the past 40 or 50 years. The Victorian woman’s horizons, Dichter explained, had been bounded by the home. The career woman of the 1930s and 1940s was single-purposed and rejected the home. But it was the third phase to which advertising should be directed, to “a woman who combines both roles – who can do a job intelligently and who at the same time takes a pride in managing her home efficiently”. The postwar woman, Dichter considered, was far more intelligent than her grandmother and a far better cook than her mother! (The Sun-Herald, 1958, p. 102). Bottomley, too, had researched the postwar housewife’s connection to the home at certain stages of her life. Such information was invaluable for successful marketing campaigns.
The DIY market segment – the under 35s – had told British Paints that “they found painting satisfying, rewarding, relaxing and even fun”. However, the survey also reported that women resented references to “ease” and “convenience” by advertisers and considered them unwelcome choices as it “detracted from their sense of reward or satisfaction” (British Paints, 1972, p. 68). But marketing was a delicate balancing act – balancing consumer interests without alerting their prejudices. Although women felt guilty using pre-cooked foods or labour-saving devices (or even instant coffee for that matter), Dichter noted that advertisers should not be worried about the postwar woman’s guilty conscience. This could be overcome, Dichter explained, as long as the advertiser stressed that “the leisure time can be spent profitably in intelligent pursuits” (The Sun-Herald, 1958, p. 102). However, if painting was one of the leisure time activities women had turned their attention to in an attempt to spend their time profitably and intelligently, it is no wonder they were angry at the lack of reward or satisfaction they felt they should receive when advertisers told them the job was easy! Dichter’s method was only one version method of MR and not all motivational researchers were as brazen in their attempts to understand and woo consumers and advertisers. Those who turned to consumer motivations used a variety of psychological methodologies to uncover the hidden reasons why people bought what they did and, equally importantly, why they did not. Where more conventional market researchers had asked consumers questions, motivational researchers had listened to the answers and then asked them different types of questions and asked them to participate in different types of tests. The technical advancements made in paint products during the postwar period, coupled with consumers eager to embrace colour to brighten up their lives, provided fertile ground for marketers and motivational researchers to investigate, uncover, and take advantage of the psychological dimensions of colour. Yet while psychological market segmentation was first used in Australia in the 1960s, it was not universally adopted; only 19 out of 46 market research organisations claimed to use MR by 1968 (AANA, 1968). But its influence was widely felt, even if marketers claimed not to use it. Segmentation of the market by lifestyle factors and use of colour as a fashion, for products as well as packaging, were increasingly integrated into marketing plans. The construction of the DIY-lifestyle segment, uncovered by MR, allowed manufacturers, marketers and researchers to profit from the knowledge. But perhaps more importantly, motivational researchers were also responding to consumers who desired to brighten up their lives and make their houses their homes by expressing their own personalities. This paper has shown that studies which consider the findings of MR surveys allow a rounder picture of the postwar consumer to be drawn and adds a further dimension to our understandings of domestic life during this pivotal period of marketing history. “Some academic researchers”, Stern (2004, p. 167) notes, “consider motivation research a precursor to lifestyle studies” (Tadajewski, 2006). But for Bottomley (1964, p. 102) at least, there was no separation – chronological or methodological – between the two, when he linked the meaning of objects to the life-stage of consumers. The “market for a particular product is seldom homogeneous” he explained, stressing the need for market segmentation in an increasingly complex market. “Demand may vary between areas; between people of different ages, incomes, occupations; between people
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of differing social outlooks or personality types”. In fact, MR was particularly important for developing a market segmentation theory, after all a person’s perception of objects may have been affected by his personality, intelligence, relationship to society and the environment. MR was ultimately about solving commercial problems. MR linked consumer behaviour with attitudes and asked consumers why they did what they did. Perhaps because of the additional information that could be uncovered, the unequal relationship between buyers and sellers and the potential for manipulation by unscrupulous marketers was not lost on Bottomley. Bottomley’s (1964), Introduction to Market Analysis, for example, stressed both the need to protect the privacy of consumers and to observe professional business ethics. But Bottomley took his responsibilities further than most market researchers. In the same year that he took over the ASRB from United Service Publicity and published a revised edition of his successful Introduction to Market Analysis, Bottomley was appointed to head the new Victorian CPC. The Council was the first government body in Australia to represent the interests of consumers. However, the ACA, the largest and most successful independent consumer organisation, which had formed in Sydney in 1959, rejected Bottomley’s attempts to forge a working relationship on the basis that he was aligned with business. The Choice (1965, p. 18), the ACA’s journal, reported that the name was completely misleading: “a classical example of deceptive packaging. When opened up one finds that some of the protectors are the very ones from whom protection is needed”. Bottomley was somewhat taken aback; for who would know what was in the consumer’s interests better than a market researcher? One of Bottomley’s first successful undertakings was to agitate for door-to-door (sales) legislation in an effort to protect consumers and regain public confidence in those who went from door-to-door (including market researchers). Despite the ACA’s refusal to co-operate, the CPC led the way for government involvement in consumer affairs, Bottomley remained a motivational researcher and a consumer advocate, and MR remains an often misunderstood technique to understand the attitudes and behaviour of consumers. Notes 1. Market research had its origins in social research aimed at solving social problems throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. But, as Hurwitz argues, it was American business that “proved to be the primary beneficiary of the development of the development of research and statistical capabilities” to solve problems. With the development of scientific management techniques to control both production and consumption, focus shifted to “waste elimination” to ensure the “efficient expenditure of advertising dollars” and initially “counting audiences was the most concrete solution to these problems” (Waller-Zuckerman, 1989; Hurwitz, 1985). 2. The Cohen Prize for Education, awarded annually, was given to the candidate who submitted the most meritorious thesis for the degree at the University of Melbourne. 3. Defined in this context as: the “person responsible for buying the household supplies for the family unit living at that address”. 4. Paint usage in Australia was believed to be 50 per cent higher than in Britain, amounting to £3.5 per head annually, due in part to the type of housing materials, climate, high
construction levels and the high standard of living. Painting the average house required ten gallons of paint. 5. Men’s shirts and wristwatches were exceptions; for further explanation and discussion on this paper see McLeod (2007). References Australian Association of National Advertisers (1968), “Marketing research: a guide to facilities and services”, Australian Association of National Advertisers, Sydney. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1960), The Housewife’s Day: A Study With Advertising, Marketing, Economic and Sociological Implications, United Service Publicity Pty, Melbourne. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1961-1965), ASRB Focus on Research, Australian Sales Research Bureau, Melbourne. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1961a), “ASRB’s ‘housewife study’ stirs journalistic excitement”, Focus on Research, No. 2, pp. 2-3. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1961b), ‘Who decides?’: A Study of the Buying Habits of Australian Men and Women, Australian Sales Research Bureau, Melbourne. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1963), “New specialised ASRB services”, Focus on Research, No. 5, p. 4. Australian Sales Research Bureau (1968), “An advertisement for ASRB’s services”, Australian Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 1 No. 2. Bates, R. (1978), British Paints Trusted T.V. . . . Sure Did: An Advertising and Marketing Case Study, Federation of Commercial Television Stations, Sydney, January. Bottomley, D. (1959), Introduction to Market Analysis, Market Research Society of Australia, Victorian Division, Melbourne. Bottomley, D. (1962a), “How big is your market?”, Focus on Research, No. 3, p. 1. Bottomley, D. (1962b), “Where psychology fits in advertising and marketing”, Focus on Research, No. 4, pp. 5-6. Bottomley, D. (1963), “New ways of looking at the consumer to determine market potential”, Journal of the Market Research Society of Australia, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 61-6. Bottomley, D. (1964), Introduction to Market Analysis, revised edition, Market Research Society of Australia, Victorian Division, Melbourne. Bottomley, D. (1967), Introduction to Market Analysis, Market Research Society of Australia, Victorian Division, Melbourne (reprinted). Bottomley, D. (1968), “Realistic product testing”, Australian Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 1 No. 2, p. 75. Bottomley, D. (1969), “Can marketing techniques be self-defeating?”, Australian Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 2 No. 1, p. 37. Bottomley, D. (1970), Why Protect Consumers?, Fabian Society, Melbourne. Bottomley, D. (1975), Public Attitudes to Outdoor Advertising, A study of Sydney and Melbourne 1975, Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia, Melbourne, June, pp. 40-7. Bottomley, D. (1978-1979), “A market oriented approach to marketing research”, Australian Marketing Researcher, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 39-48. Bottomley, D. (1979), “Trends in data collection”, Australian Market Researcher, Vol. 3 No. 2, p. 25.
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Boyd, R. (1952), “The color doesn’t matter”, The Age, 10 June, p. 6. Boyd, R. (1954), “Color-mixing without tears: at last”, The Age, 25 November, p. 6. British Paints (1965a), “Advertisement”, The Age, 13 May, p. 3. British Paints (1965b), “Advertisement”, The Age, 10 December, p. 3. British Paints (1972), “British Paints Limited: a new corporate identity”, Journal of Australian Marketing Projects, National Committee of the Hoover Awards for Marketing, West Ryde. Cheskin, L. (1959), Why People Buy: Motivation Research and its Successful Application, Liveright, New York, NY. (The) Choice (1965), October, p. 18. Cleary, J. (1956), The House of Berger: Forty Years of Colour Service in Australia, Dampier, Sydney. Comalco (1964), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, August, p. 81. Department of Trade (1957), Brief Review of the Paint Industry, No. 88 Industry Study Series, Industrial Division, Melbourne, January. Dichter, E. (1964), Handbook of Consumer Motivations, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Dingle, T. (2000), “Necessity the mother of invention, or do-it-yourself”, in Troy, P. (Ed.), A History of European Housing in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 57-76. Dulux (1964a), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, January, p. 73. Dulux (1964b), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, August, p. 82. Dulux (1964c), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, December, p. 81. Epstein, H. (1962), “Is honesty in advertising declining?”, paper presented at the Australian Association of National Advertisers, 15 September, Sydney. Epstein, H. (1967), “The magic market”, paper presented at the Seminar on “Problems and opportunities for women at work”, 14 October, Macquarie University, Sydney. Finley, D. (1962), “Market research in the 1960s”, Journal of the Market Research Society of Australia, Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 69, The South Australian division of the Market Research Society of Australia, Sydney. Frank, T. (1997), The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counter Culture and the Rise of Hip-Consumerism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Fullerton, R.A. (1990), “The art of marketing research: selections from Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s ‘Shoe Buying in Zurich’ (1933)”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 319-27. Fullerton, R.A. (2005), “The devil’s lure(?): motivation research, 1934-1954”, in Neilson, L.C. (Ed.), The Future of Marketing’s Past: Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Historical and Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM), Association for Historical Research in Marketing, Long Beach, CA, pp. 134-43. Gibbons, J.R. (1965), “Some fundamentals about motivational research”, Rydges, January, p. 19. Gregory’s Guides and Maps (n.d), Gregory’s Handbook for Australian Builders, Gregory’s Guides and Maps, Sydney. Hurwitz, D. (1985), “The culture of business and the business of culture: social research, scientific management and the collection of media-audience data”, in Hollander, S.C. and Nevett, T. (Eds), Marketing in the Long Run: Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI, pp. 43-53.
Hutchings, K. (1996), “The battle for consumer power: post-war women and advertising”, Journal of Australian Studies, Nos 50-51, pp. 66-77. Irving, H. (1991), “Little elves and mind control: advertising and its critics”, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, Vol. 4 No. 2, available at: www.mcc. murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoþom/4.2/Irving.html Johnson, L. (1996), “‘As housewives we are worms’: women, modernity and the home question’”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 449-63. Katona, G. (1960), Powerful Consumer: Psychological Studies of the American Economy, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Kingston, B. (1994a), Basket, Bag and Trolley: A History of Shopping in Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Kingston, B. (1994b), “‘She’ will mean ‘a complaining customer’: women as shoppers, c.1995-1970”, in Grieve, N. and Burn, A. (Eds), Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp. 194-203. Laminex (1961), “Laminex: lovelier for a lifetime”, Do It Yourself, Laminex, Melbourne, p. 65, 1961 Annual. McLeod, A. (2003), “‘The lady means business’: marketing to the electrical appliance consumer in the 1950s and 1960s”, Melbourne Historical Journal, No. 31, pp. 54-73. McLeod, A. (2006), “Ten Pin Bowling”, Encyclopaedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. McLeod, A. (2007), Abundance: Buying and Selling in Postwar Australia, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne. McNair, W.A. (Ed.) (1978), Some Reflections on the First Fifty Years of Market Research in Australia 1928-1978, Market Research Society of Australia, NSW Division, Sydney. McQueen, H. (2006), “Fancy work: the mass aesthetic”, Australian Cultural History, No. 25, pp. 83-113. Mackay, H. (1998), “Subliminal myth: how a generation was fooled”, available at: www.theage. com.au/daily/980707/bus/bus18.html Madigan, R. and Munro, M. (1996), “‘House beautiful’: style and consumption in the home”, Sociology, Vol. 30 No. 41, pp. 41-57. Martineau, P. (1957), Motivation in Advertising: Motives That Make People Buy, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Martineau, P. (1958), “Social classes and spending behaviour”, Journal of Marketing, October, pp. 122-3. Murphy, J. (2000), Imagining the Fifties: Private Sentiment and Political Culture in Menzies’ Australia, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney. Oakman, D. (1995), “Researching Australia: a history of the market research industry in Australia, 1928-1990”, unpublished MA thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. Obrec, L. (1999), “Marketing, motives and Dr. Freud”, Detroiter Magazine, December, available at: www.moline-consulting.com/Reinventando/Pagines/conceptoDeLasMotiva cioner.htm O’Callaghan, J. (1993), “The Australian interior: the importance of being contemporary”, in O’Callaghan, J. (Ed.), The Australian Dream: Design of the Fifties, Powerhouse, Sydney, pp. 157-77. Oliver, J. (1999), Australian Home Beautiful: From Hills Hoist to High Rise, Hardie Grant Books, McMahon’s Point.
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Packard, V. (1957), Hidden Persuaders, Penguin, New York, NY. Reekie, G. (1991), “Market research and the post-war housewife”, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, pp. 15-27. Reekie, G. (1993), “Temptations: sex”, Selling and the Department Store, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Roy Morgan Research Centre (1962-1963), Second Survey on Lawn Mowers, Pope Products, Adelaide. Saurin, V. (1967), “Probing the twilight”, The Herald, November 18, p. 26. Schwarzkopf, S. (2007), “‘Culture’ and the limits of innovation in marketing: Ernest Dichter, motivation studies and psychoanalytic consumer research in Great Britain, 1950s-1970s”, Management & Organizational History, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 219-36. Scott, D. (1980), The Halfway House to Infidelity: A History of the Melbourne Unitarian Church, 1853-1973, Unitarian Fellowship of Australia and the Melbourne Peace Memorial Church, Melbourne. Shapiro, L.J. (1959), “The Chicagoland woman and her food stores”, The Chicago Tribune. Sheridan, S., Baird, B., Borrett, K. and Ryan, L. (2002), Who Was That Woman?: The Australian Women’s Weekly in the Postwar Years, UNSW Press, Sydney. Stern, B. (2001), “The why of consumption: contemporary perspectives on consumer motives, goals, and desires”, Journal of Advertising Research, July-August, pp. 83-5, Book Review. Stern, B. (2004), “The importance of being Ernest: commemorating Dichter’s contribution to advertising research”, Journal of Advertising Research, June, pp. 165-9. (The) Sun-Herald (1958), “Oh, men! oh, women! oh, psychology!”, The Sun-Herald, 26 October, p. 102. Tadajewski, M. (2006), “Remembering motivation research: toward an alternative genealogy of interpretive consumer research”, Marketing Theory, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 429-66. Taubmans (1964), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, December, pp. 31-2. Tolhurst, K. (1979), “Some fundamentals of market research”, in Tolhurst, K. (Ed.), The Fourth Step, Proceedings of the First Field Group Conference of the Market Research Society of Australia, December (NSW Division), p. 6. Waller-Zuckerman, M.E. (1989), “‘Preconceived notions’ and the historian’s dilemma: market research by women’s magazine publishers in the interwar years”, in Nevett, T., Whitney, K. and Hollander, S.C. (Eds), Marketing History: The Emerging Discipline, Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Historical Research in Marketing and Marketing Thought, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI, pp. 331-53. Watson Sharp, W. (1953), Australian Methods of Building Construction, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.
Further reading Dulux (1962), “Advertisement”, Australian Home and Garden, November, pp. 24-5. Dulux (1963), “Advertisement”, The Australian House and Garden, July, p. 29. Dulux (1965), “Advertisement”, The Age, 3 June, p. 15. Stern, B. (1990), “Literary criticism and the history of marketing thought: a new perspective on ‘reading’ marketing theory”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 329-36.
About the author Amanda McLeod is a Writer with a particular interest in consumer capitalism and its alternatives. She holds a PhD in History from Monash University and has worked on a wide range of projects both inside and outside the academy. Her first book, Abundance: Buying and Selling in Postwar Australia, was published in 2007. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne where she is researching the notion of post-industrial self-sufficiency and writing a history of Consumer Affairs Victoria (1964-2010). She lives in the Yarra Ranges, East of Melbourne Victoria, Australia with her family. Amanda McLeod can be contacted at:
[email protected]
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