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Building Knowledge about the Consumer: The Emergence of Market Research in the Motion Picture Industry

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  • Gerben Bakker

Abstract

The way film companies obtained knowledge about the consumer resembled that of fashion industries. Initially, intermediaries analysed sales and observed customers while they consumed the service. As the film industry developed between the 1890s and the 1940s, however, its gathering of information increasingly began to resemble the market research of mass-distribution industries. Technological and contractual changes, as well as a rise in sunk costs, affected the way market research was done. By the late 1930s, film companies' increasing need for market information quickly made them adopt the newly available market research techniques. This essay traces this evolution showing how market research techniques were systematised and developed. The surveys by the British Granada Theatres cinema chain stood on the threshold of the era of modern market research, while the work of George Gallup's Audience Research of the US marked its advent.

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  • Gerben Bakker, 2003. "Building Knowledge about the Consumer: The Emergence of Market Research in the Motion Picture Industry," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 101-127.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:45:y:2003:i:1:p:101-127
    DOI: 10.1080/713999299
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    Cited by:

    1. Bakker, Gerben, 2012. "Adopting the rights-based model: music multinationals and local music industries since 1945," Economic History Working Papers 47507, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    2. Gerben Bakker, 2007. "The Evolution of Entertainment Consumption and the Emergence of Cinema, 1890–1940," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: The Evolution of Consumption: Theories and Practices, pages 93-137, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    3. Gerben Bakker, 2005. "The decline and fall of the European film industry: sunk costs, market size, and market structure, 1890–1927," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 58(2), pages 310-351, May.
    4. Bakker, Gerben, 2004. "At the origins of increased productivity growth in services. Productivity, social savings and the consumer surplus of the film industry, 1900-1938," Economic History Working Papers 22348, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    5. Bakker, Gerben, 2014. "Soft power: the media industries in Britain since 1870," Economic History Working Papers 56333, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    6. Bakker, Gerben, 2012. "Sunk costs and the dynamics of creative industries," Economic History Working Papers 49081, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    7. Orbach, Barak Y. & Einav, Liran, 2007. "Uniform prices for differentiated goods: The case of the movie-theater industry," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 129-153.
    8. John Sedgwick & Michael Pokorny, 2010. "Consumers as risk takers: Evidence from the film industry during the 1930s," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(1), pages 74-99.
    9. M. Rimscha, 2013. "It’s not the economy, stupid! External effects on the supply and demand of cinema entertainment," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 37(4), pages 433-455, November.

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