After almost six years of seeing research “sold,” I separated research from salesmanship. In the fall of 1951, I organized everything on a purely service basis. I also eliminated all the technical color services that had to do with color printing. We went about quietly getting our share of marketing research from our regular clients and were kept busy getting out reports on ocular measurements, color and image ratings and field tests of brand images, packages and some ads.
By 1957, it became apparent that Color Research Institute was no longer the only organization or almost the only one in the field of motivation research. When my articles on “unconscious level testing” were published in business publications in 1947 and 1948, little attention was paid to them. But ten years later, marketing research people and marketing and advertising executives began to discover the validity of tests that are conducted with indirect methods. Many were emulating Color Research Institute.
In the spring of 1957, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders was published and motivation researchers sprouted by the dozen. Motivation research was discussed in all business and advertising circles, and the marketing research profession became divided into two camps. In one camp were the traditional researchers who conduct polls, readership studies, impact measurements, recall tests and interviews with consumers on their preferences. In the other were the motivation researchers who employ unstructured projective techniques and depth interviews.
Since Color Research Institute conducts motivation research with controlled techniques and because it employs traditional statistical forms, it remained outside of both camps.
Vance Packard classified me with Dichter and Gardner and with some who are not actually in the field of motivation research.
The Hidden Persuaders seemed to make almost everyone motivation research conscious and it aroused many people against motivation research. The implication in Packard’s book is that motivation researchers are manipulators.
Actually, what Packard points out is, that some individuals misuse motivation research, that they could use it for anti-social purposes and that there are some who would, if they could, use motivation research against the interests of the people.
This is true about almost everything. Language can be used to say good and true things, and it can be used to make evil and false statements. Motivation research can be used for good or evil. It depends on who uses it and for what purpose.
It became quite clear that I had to take quick action to accomplish the following. One, produce evidence that motivation research is not new, as many seemed to think; that Color Research Institute had been in the business of motivation research for over a dozen years. Two, that there is nothing insidious or anti-social about motivation research; that it is merely a means for finding out what people really want. Because people cannot always tell us what they like or why they like an object or product, we use special techniques for getting this information.
After a number of conferences at the Color Research Institute offices, it was decided that the most important articles that have been published in the last ten years about the marketing media testing activities of Color Research Institute, written by me and by others, should be published in book form.
Since documentation was of primary importance, it was best, we thought, to use the articles in the original form. I was well aware that such a book would not be a piece of original literature.
In order to give unity to the book and to give it a natural starting point, I wrote four new special articles and arranged to have them published in business publications. I asked Van Allen Bradley, editorial writer and book critic of the Chicago Daily News, to help us choose sixteen articles out of some forty that have appeared since 1947. Twenty articles, including the four new ones, were assembled into manuscript form. Bradley volunteered to write an introduction.
After testing a number of titles, How to Predict What People Will Buy was published in early fall of 1957.
Perhaps, largely due to its coming out when The Hidden Persuaders was still on the best seller list, How to Predict What People Will Buy became a success, considering the nature of the book. It was displayed in many bookstore windows with The Hidden Persuaders.
Many individuals in the marketing research field did not welcome its appearance in marketing literature, of course. However, it was reviewed favorably in most of the business press and was received with enthusiasm in most business circles. It is considered by many, and it was meant to be, a primer in motivation research. It is a documented record of the pioneering and progress in controlled motivation research methods and techniques. It is a key to a dozen years of testing marketing media on an unconscious level.
Most of the chapters were written by me. Some were originally interviews with me written by journalists.
Some of the chapters in How to Predict What People Will Buy are elementary in character. This fact attracts many readers and alienates some.
A number of criticisms came to me on How to Predict What People Will Buy. “You should write a book that goes deeper into motivation research,” one friend said to me. Another thought that I should tell more about testing techniques. A third person expressed the opinion that I should reveal a little of how ads and filmed commercials are tested on an unconscious level. A fourth thought that I should address management and point out to management why it should use marketing research. A fifth suggested that I should tell about my background and how I began testing on an unconscious level.
It became clear that there was need for another book on controlled marketing research. In this book, I cover what was not covered in How to Predict What People Will Buy.
I named this book Why People Buy. It is a definitive book. It begins with “Basis for Management Decision” and ends with reports of actual studies. In the testing procedures, we do not ask consumers why they buy and they don’t tell us. However, controlled tests, that I describe, reveal what motivates people to buy and what does not. In essence, this means the tests show why they buy. Either “What Motivates People to Buy” or “What Makes Them Buy,” which represents literally what the book deals with, would be a clumsy and awkward title. Therefore, the book is called Why People Buy.
I REMEMBER my father saying about a man who was a great financial success, that he was a “shrewd businessman.” I heard him say on another occasion, that another friend of his was lucky in business; “everything he touches turns into gold.” These two evaluations are typical of my father’s and grandfather’s generation. Even now there are executives, some in large corporations, who make marketing decisions on hunches or conjecture.
The “scientific” approach to marketing is still not used by many organizations. Many manufacturers, who have adopted scientific production methods and scientifically organized production management, still do not plan marketing programs on the basis of facts. Comparatively few executives of small businesses make marketing forecasts on the basis of scientifically controlled market research. The scientific approach to marketing is still new.
Many of the large corporations use various types of marketing research on which they rely and use as a basis for executive judgment. Most executives in large corporations use research on sales of competitive brands, test markets and some other types of check points in planning their marketing programs.
A well-planned marketing program has a specific goal and an operating budget. A marketing plan incorporates an estimate of future sales based on some specific measures