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

拟议的项目追溯了市场研究在二十世纪后半叶的发展。重点将放在预测方法的出现及其在公司层面决策中的实际应用上。随着市场研究专家自20世纪50年代以来提供了越来越多的市场分析，公司经济行为的基本基础如何变化的问题将成为本研究的核心。我假设，当内部适应性期望与外部市场感知相结合时，建立良好的直觉形式的战略规划被更系统的管理概念所取代。虽然很明显，市场研究成为一个既定的营销管理工具后，1945年，历史研究在很大程度上忽略了这一发展到今天。为了填补这一空白，本项目提供了一个实证分析的崛起，商业市场研究公司的信息机构和平行的制度化的内部市场研究部门从20世纪50年代到80年代。德国和美国的消费品公司及其咨询机构将作为案例研究。比较方法旨在揭示适应过程中的空间、时间和质量差异，同时对管理战略“美国化”的共同说法提出质疑。“首先，它的目的是勾勒出（全球）经济商品市场的发展，并将市场信息作为信息商品进行理论化。其次，它将追踪调查设计和预测建模中新方法的传播，从学术领域到公司内部的实际应用。在这方面，要求提高科学客观性与要求提高利润导向之间的紧张关系将受到特别关注。这使我们第三次提出一个核心问题，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加以运作。基于丰富的公司记录和其他经验源材料，该项目将通过微观层面的分析显示，经验和期望形成的既定做法不仅在决策者眼中被贬低，而且越来越多地被新的，更标准化和似乎更客观的预测模型所取代。比较框架将使人们能够看出这一进程在速度和强度上的差异，以及在信息管理模式上可能存在的文化偏好。最后，在不断变化的经济环境的背景下，我将能够分析预期形成的变化是否遵循顺序学习的模式，或者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.