Building Knowledge about the Consumer: The Emergence of Market Research in the Motion Picture Industry

The way film companies obtained knowledge about the consumer resembled that of fashion industries. Initially, intermediaries analysed sales and observed customers while they consumed the service. As the film industry developed between the 1890s and the 1940s, however, its gathering of information increasingly began to resemble the market research of mass-distribution industries. Technological and contractual changes, as well as a rise in sunk costs, affected the way market research was done. By the late 1930s, film companies' increasing need for market information quickly made them adopt the newly available market research techniques. This essay traces this evolution showing how market research techniques were systematised and developed. The surveys by the British Granada Theatres cinema chain stood on the threshold of the era of modern market research, while the work of George Gallup's Audience Research of the US marked its advent.