Professional Prognosticators? Market Research and the Formation of Business Expectations in West Germany and the United States after 1945

拟议的项目追溯了二十世纪下半叶市场研究的发展。重点将放在预测方法的出现和它们在公司层面决策中的实际应用上。自20世纪50年代以来，随着市场研究专家提供越来越多的市场分析，企业经济行为的基本基础是如何变化的，这个问题将是本研究的核心。我假设，当内部适应性期望与外部市场感知混杂在一起时，建立良好的直觉形式的战略规划被更系统化的管理概念所取代。虽然很明显，市场研究只是在1945年之后才成为市场营销管理的既定工具，但直到今天，历史研究在很大程度上忽略了这一发展。为了填补这一空白，本项目对20世纪50年代至80年代商业市场研究公司作为信息机构的兴起以及内部市场研究部门的平行制度化进行了实证分析。西德和美国的消费品公司及其咨询机构将作为个案研究。比较方法旨在揭示适应过程的空间、时间和质量差异，同时对管理战略“美国化”的共同叙述提出质疑。该项目位于优先方案确定的三个重点领域的交汇处：“专家知识”、“公司”和“消费”。首先，它旨在概述（全球）经济预测市场的发展，并将市场信息作为信息产品的商品化理论化。其次，它将追踪新方法在调查设计和预测建模中的传播，从学术领域到公司内部的实际应用。在这里，要求提高科学客观性和要求增加以利润为导向之间的紧张关系将受到特别关注。这就引出了第三个核心问题，即公司如何将这些新获得的信息产品作为其决策过程的一部分进行操作。基于丰富的公司记录和其他经验来源材料，该项目将通过微观层面的分析来展示，经验和期望形成的既定实践如何不仅在决策者眼中贬值，而且越来越多地被新的、更标准化的、似乎更客观的预测模型所增强甚至取代。比较框架将使人们能够辨别这一过程在速度和强度方面的差异，以及在信息管理模式方面可能存在的文化偏好。最后，在不断变化的经济背景之前，我将能够分析，期望形成的变化是遵循顺序学习的模式，还是由情境危机管理驱动的。

The proposed project traces the development of market research in the second half of the twentieth century. The emphasis will be both on the emergence of prognostic methods and on their practical application in company-level decision making. The question of how the fundamental basis for economic actions of companies changed as market research experts offered a growing array of market analyses since the 1950s will be at the core of this study. I hypothesize that well-established intuitive forms of strategic planning were replaced by more systematic management concepts when internal adaptive expectations intermingled with external market perceptions. While it is clear that market research became an established instrument of marketing management only after 1945, historical research has largely ignored this development up to today. To fill this gap, this project offers an empirical analysis of the rise of commercial market research firms as information agencies and of the parallel institutionalization of in-house market research departments from the 1950s to1980s. Consumer goods firms in West Germany and the United States and their consulting agencies will serve as case studies. The comparative approach aims to reveal spatial, temporal and qualitative differences in adaptation processes while calling into question the common narrative of an "Americanization" of management strategies.The project is located at the intersection of the three defined areas of emphasis of the Priority Programme: "Expert Knowledge," "Companies," and "Consumption." First, it aims to sketch the development of a (global) market for economic prognoses and to theorize the commodification of market information as information goods. Secondly, it will trace the diffusion of new methodologies in survey design and prognostic modeling from the academic realm to their practical application within companies. Here, the tensions between claims to increased scientific objectivity and the demand of an increasing profit-orientation will receive special attention. This leads us thirdly to the central question of how companies operationalized such newly acquired information goods as part of their decision-making processes. Based on a wealth of company records and other empirical source material the project will show by means of a micro-level analysis, how established practices of experience and expectation formation were not only devalued in the eyes of decision makers, but increasingly augmented or even substituted by new, more standardized and seemingly more objective prognostic models. The comparative framework will make it possible to discern differences in speed and intensity in this process as well as possible cultural preferences in modes of information management. Before the backdrop of changing economic contexts, finally, I will be able to analyze, if changes in expectation formation followed patterns of sequential learning or were rather driven by situational crisis management.