Market Research
US car makers had it good. As quickly as they could manufacture cars, people bought them. By 1914, that was changing. In higher price brackets, especially, purchasers and dealerships were becoming choosier. One commentator warned that the retailers could no longer sell what their own judgement dictated \u2013 they must sell what the consumer wanted. That commentator was Charles Coolidge Parlin, widely recognised as the man who invented the very idea of market research. The invention of market research marks an early step in a broader shift from a \u201cproducer-led\u201d to \u201cconsumer-led\u201d approach to business \u2013 from making something then trying to persuade people to buy it, to trying to find out what people might buy and then making it. One century later, the market research profession is huge: in the United States alone, it employs around half a million people.
Producer: Ben Crighton\nEditors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon
(Image: Market research, Credit: Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock)