Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface and Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors PART I: INTRODUCTION Ernest Dichter, Motivation Research and the 'Century of the Consumer'; R.Gries & S.Schwarzkopf PART II: DIMENSIONS OF ERNEST DICHTER'S WORK AND PERSONALITY From Vienna to the United States and Back: Ernest Dichter and American Consumer Culture; D.Horowitz Ernest Dichter, the Motivational Researcher; R.Fullerton Ernest Dichter, Religion and the Spirit of Capitalism: an Exegete of Pure Cult Religion Serves Consumer Society; G.Sorgo Ernest Dichter and Consumer Behaviour: Intellectual Primacy and Interpretive Consumer Research; M.Tadajewski PART III: THE BRANDING OF CONSUMER LIFE - CASE STUDIES ON ERNEST DICHTER'S WORK Ernest Dichter's Studies on Automobile Marketing; H.Karmasin Ernest Dichter and the Peacock Revolution: Motivation Research, the Menswear Market, and the DuPont Company; R.Blaszczyk The 'Sex of Food': Ernest Dichter, Libido, and American Food Advertising; K.Parkin Patriarch or Promoter of the Women's Movement? Ernest Dichter and his Interpretation of the Female Image; K.Krummeich & S.Lahm PART IV: THE EUROPEAN THEATRE Ernest Dichter as Midwife and Educator: Postwar European Consumer Societies and the Sociology of the Consumer; K.Hellmann A Backward Republic or 'Brave New Austria'? Market and Motivation Research in Dichter's Home Country after World War II; A.Morawetz The Reception of Ernest Dichter and the Resistance to Motivation Research in Francophone Europe; V.Pouillard Ernest Dichter Motivates the British: Motivation Research and Contested Professional Legitimacies in Britain; S.Schwarzkopf The 'Depth Boy': Ernest Dichter and the Postwar German Advertising Elite 'Victim of a technical hitch...': Ernest Dichter as Proprietor of a Guesthouse with Bugging Installation; D.Schindelbeck PART V: CONCLUSION Motivation Research - Episode or Paradigm Shift? From Ernest Dichter to Consumer Ethnography, Neuromarketing and Bio-Power; R.Gries & S.Schwarzkopf
Synopsis
The work of motivation and consumer researcher Ernest Dichter was a milestone in the psychological creation of the modern consumer. This collection contextualizes Ernest Dichter within twentieth-century consumer culture and it charts the rise of psychological approaches to consumption in post-war Europe and North America.