A Historical Glimpse of the Marketing Research Industry
Preface
I came across many names who contributed to the emergence of marketing research, such as Karl Pearson, Harold Lasswell, Albert Cantril, and Ernest Dichter. Most of them, however, were paving the road and laying a few stones along it, until Charles Parlin completed it. So who was that man, the one later called the father of marketing research?
The Father of the Marketing Research Industry
Every field of knowledge or branch in this world has a father credited with discovering it or with laying out its basic, founding principles. The father of the field of marketing research was Charles Parlin, who was born in 1872 and died in 1942.
The first (multi-stage) marketing research he conducted was in the early nineteenth century, on behalf of the “Curtis” publishing company. Its purpose was to gather information about customers and the market in order to help the company sell more advertising in its magazine, “The Saturday Evening Post.”
Other sources mention that his first research was in the area of agricultural applications, in 1911.
He is the author of the saying “The customer is King.” In 1945, an annual award bearing his name was established by the American Marketing Association and the Wharton School, in cooperation with the Curtis Publishing Company, in recognition of the great efforts he made for this industry. This award is considered the oldest and most prestigious among those granted annually in the gatherings of the marketing research industry. Each year, thousands of people from around the world come forward to nominate themselves for it, and it is awarded based on criteria and priorities that focus on the degree to which a contribution has influenced the field as a whole, and on the extent of the change or improvement it brings to the industry and how it helps it grow for the better.
In the cover image of the article I have placed for you a picture of the father of marketing research and a picture of the award’s logo.
The First Company to Apply Marketing Research
Even if the first to attempt something was not successful, the one who had the honor of being first at anything stands out and is remembered, simply for being first. Which of the readers has not heard before of Abbas ibn Firnas, despite his failed attempt at flight? Yet because it was the first… that set it apart from all the other attempts.
There was some disagreement over which company was the first to apply marketing research, but the majority attribute that first initiative to the company of the British nurse Florence Nightingale, British Nurse Florence Nightingale. This was mentioned in one of the books of the ESOMAR organization that we spoke about in the previous article. The title of the book, for anyone who wishes to read it, is Market Research Explained. This nurse made significant contributions to statistics and was the pioneer in merging medical data with statistics; she developed statistical medical applications and developed charts to present medical data in an easy way.
Her work was not confined to nursing alone, as her name might suggest. Rather, she used her statistical expertise to measure and collect data from applied medical operations, and she also developed charts to present her data so that it would gain the understanding and satisfaction of its audience.
Other Scattered Events
The first poll was recorded in 1824. It was conducted by one of the local newspaper agencies in the United States of America to determine certain political leanings. This type of poll is called a straw poll, “straw polls,” and the name comes from an old saying that means “straw in the air,” “straws in the wind,” because people used to throw bits of straw into the air to learn the direction of the wind, since the straw would drift along with it. Likewise, these polls help us learn the direction of a particular thing.
Karl Pearson (born 1857, died 1936) is regarded as one of the founders of modern statistics, and one of his most important discoveries, in 1893, was the standard deviation (Standard Deviation).
Rensis Likert (born 1903, died 1981) invented one of the most famous scales in 1932, and it is still used to this day. It was named after him: the Likert Scale, Likert Scale.
In 1941, Robert Merton and his colleague Paul Lazarsfeld together invented focus groups, “Focus Groups,” one of the most important types of research applications in the field of qualitative or descriptive marketing research, as I prefer to call it.
For anyone who wishes to delve deeper into the history of this industry, I recommend the following book:
A New Brand of Business Charles Parlin, Curtis Publishing Company, and the Origins of Market Research by Douglas B. Ward | TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS - Philadelphia 2010
Conclusion
I do not intend to recount every detail and every invention in this field. My aim was simply to make clear the idea that this field is still young among many other fields, and that the door to development and invention within it remains wide open. There are annual awards from several organizations set aside for anyone who finds or invents new models that prove their worth in a world where every company wants to possess competitive information in order to outdo its rivals.
And to God belongs the guidance of the way.
