Advertising Research in the Pre-Depression Years: A Cultural History

Abstract

Conventional wisdom within the discipline of advertising posits that advertising research emerged during the Depression as an attempt to alleviate uncertainty in the marketplace. The cultural history presented here challenges that explanation. The author suggests that the scientific advertising movement and the development of scientific marketing provide evidence that a conceptualization of research and a number of institutional relationships related to the conduct of research were settling into place significantly earlier than the Depression, near the turn of the twentieth century. Further, while research emerged as a scientific tool to reduce risks associated with uncertainty, research was at the same time a professional symbol of the legitimacy of advertising practice.