Culver City, August 1944. Producer David O. Selznick is supervising the final changes to The House of Dr Edwards, the latest film by Alfred Hitchcock. Selznick has sunk nearly $1.7 million in the film-and is determined to get it back. Feeling uncomfortable about the title, he contacts Audience Research, a market research firm, to test several titles among cinemagoers. While Hidden Impulse and The Couch register little interest, Edwards - Hitchcock's favourite - and, finally, Spellbound, ring a bell. Selznick notices that while men prefer Edwards to Spellbound by a 15 per cent margin, women prefer Spellbound to Edwards by 13 per cent. Since women 'bring men to the theatre much more than men bring women', and Hitchcock's name already guarantees a masculine appeal, he ignores Hitchcock and decides the ultimate title will be Spellbound.(2) By the 1940s, adequate knowledge about consumer preferences had become essential for survival in the motion picture industry. Film companies had been among the first customers of market research firms using scientific research design. and random sampling, which emerged in the 1930s.(3) Many films considered classics today were shaped by feedback from market research. Ever since the emergence of cinemas in the mid-1900s, the film industry had been obtaining detailed knowledge about the tastes, desires, and habits of consumers. While life-cycles of other products were measured in years, or at least a season, those of early films were measured in days. While many other industries launched new products infrequently, the film industry launched them constantly. The short product life-cycle forced film producers to track changes in consumer preferences closely. They had to observe and record how customers reacted to their products, to quickly adapt products they were developing to changes in market tastes, and to apply effective marketing strategies. The short product life-cycle also meant that when a film company discovered an unsatisfied need, it could cater for it in a few weeks. The success of film producers was not primarily dependent upon technological innovation or 4 scientific discovery, but on determining and meeting consumer tastes. Although several other consumer goods industries shared this characteristic, the early film industry was most like fashion goods industries. These industries had a similar, extreme sensitivity to changes in consumer preferences and also launched new products constantly. They therefore shared a need to obtain detailed knowledge about the consumer. In the 1870s, for example, the hat manufacturer John Jacob Astor employed an artist to sketch women's hats in the park, to help him determine the most popular fashions.' In the pottery and glassware industries, 'the ability to envision target audiences was essential for survival'.(6) These industries used 'fashion intermediaries', persons who observed shoppers browsing the shelves, or store managers who reported the latest tastes back to the manufacturer.(7) Nevertheless, while fashion products lasted at least a season and were launched in batches, early films lasted a few weeks and were launched continuously. Second, the fashion industries could target market segments such as women, teenagers, or the middle class, while the film industry had to reach as many segments as possible, before television! Third, motion picture companies incurred large sunk costs and only small marginal costs. While fashion companies could adjust their output if a product proved unpopular, and sell unpopular products at rock-bottom prices, film producers had already incurred most costs. This article, then, examines how motion pictures changed from an industry that obtained knowledge about the consumer like a fashion goods industry, drawing on informal research by fashion intermediaries, into an industry that used modem scientific market research, like mass-producers of consumer goods. It investigates how changes in the industry structure affected market research, and how market information was used in business strategies. The research is relevant to 'marketing history generally, because it examines an early and avid user of market research. But the constant launch of new products enables the further study of many cases, like scientists studying fruit flies, so giving micro-level insight into the impact of market research on business strategies.(9) The period covered ranges from the industry's beginnings in the 1890s until the late 1940s, when television, vertical disintegration, and the emerging youth culture changed the nature of market research. Using detailed primary sources, the focus will be on the US and Britain, because the former was the largest entertainment market in the world, the latter the largest in Europe, and because the former was a large exporter, the latter a large importer.(10) The section below discusses how the changing industry structure shaped the development of market research, the subsequent sections focus on two significant firms that brought market research to the motion picture industry: Sidney Bernstein's Granada Theatres and George Gallup's Audience Research.
