Engineered to Sell : European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism / Jan L. Logemann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Logemann, Jan L., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marketing--United States--History.

Marketing.

Consumers--United States.

Consumers.

Immigrants--United States.

Immigrants.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (380 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Forever immortalized in the television series Mad Men, the mid-twentieth century marketing world influenced nearly every aspect of American culture-music, literature, politics, economics, consumerism, race relations, gender, and more. In Engineered to Sell, Jan Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research and commercial design who transformed capitalism, from the 1930s through the 1960s. He argues that the history of marketing consumer goods is not a story of American exceptionalism. Instead, the careers of immigrants point to the limits of the "Americanization" paradigm. First, Logemann explains the rise of a dynamic world of goods by emphasizing changes in marketing approaches increasingly tailored to consumers. Second, he looks at how and why consumer engineering was shaped by transatlantic exchanges. From Austrian psychologists and little-known social scientists to the illustrious Bauhaus artists, the émigrés at the center of this story illustrate the vibrant cultural and commercial connections between metropolitan centers: Vienna and New York; Paris and Chicago; Berlin and San Francisco. These mid-century consumer engineers crossed national and disciplinary boundaries not only within arts and academia but also between governments, corporate actors, and social reform movements. By focusing on the transnational lives of émigré consumer researchers, marketers, and designers, Engineered to Sell details the processes of cultural translation and adaptation that mark both the mid-century transformation of American marketing and the subsequent European shift to "American" consumer capitalism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Consumer Engineers and the Transnational Origins of Consumer Capitalism

1. The Origins of "Consumer Engineering": Interwar Consumer Capitalism in Transatlantic Perspective

The Rise of Consumer Engineering: American Marketing at Midcentury (1930s-1960s)

2. The Art of Asking Why: The "Vienna School" of Market Research and Transfers in Consumer Psychology

3. From Mass Persuasion to Engineered Consent: The Impact of "European" Psychology on the Cognitive Turn in Marketing Thought

4 Hidden Persuaders? Market Researchers as "Knowledge Entrepreneurs" between Business and the Social Sciences

"Tastemakers" or "Wastemakers"? Commercial Design at Midcentury (1930-1960)

5. The Designer as Marketing Expert: European Immigrants and the Professionalization of Industrial and Graphic Design in the United States

6. The Commercialization of Social Engineering? Adapting Radical Design Reform to American Mass Marketing

7. "Streamlining Everything": Design, Market Research, and the Postwar "American" World of Goods

Bridging Transatlantic Divides: Bringing Consumer Modernity "Back" to Europe

8. Corporate America and the International Style: The Transnational Network of Knoll Associates between Europe and the United States

9. The "Return" to Europe: Emigrés as Cultural Translators and the Transformation of Postwar European Marketing

Consumer Engineering: Challenges and Legacies

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations for Archival Sources

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226660295

022666029X

OCLC:

1129235877