and ads. And he used it in connection with adult education almost a quarter of a century ago.
In How to Predict What People Buy, Cheskin reported about his pioneering work in marketing research. In Why People Buy, he reveals actual studies and discusses the principles in detail.
Each chapter in this book is instructive and revealing. One chapter, “How Scientific Can Marketing Research Be?”, is the ultimate scientific answer to management men who are not using marketing research because they believe it is not scientific.
In the chapter “What Is and What Is Not Predictable,” Cheskin reports on two studies, one in which a readership study based on interviews is compared with eye-movement tests, and a media study in which respondents tell in which medium they have seen certain products advertised. These two studies themselves make this book a good contribution to the marketing research field.
The book is filled with marketing research disclosures that are vital to every person in the marketing field. Brand managers and advertising men will profit greatly from reading Why People Buy. It has special significance to those in top management who are interested in or concerned with advertising and marketing consumer products.
HOWARD D. HADLEY
PREFACE
THOUGHTS of what was happening in my life twenty years ago come to my mind as I write this preface. In the fall of 1938, I completed the manuscript for my first book, Living with Art. It was published in 1940. I have just reviewed a number of the chapters in the book and they brought to my mind the idealism that motivated me. I have been told that idealism is quite evident to anyone who reads it.
To put down the “social-aesthetic” principles in the simplest possible language so that they would reach the greatest number of readers was quite a struggle. I remember the torturous job of cutting my original 425-page manuscript down to 200 pages. I was completely wrapped up in and dedicated the book to Adult Education.
Adult Education leaders liked the book. It is one of the most widely quoted and least read books. Authors refer to it, speakers quote from it, but few besides these have read it.
As a student and later a teacher, I could not understand how a modern, up-to-date Frenchman, like Matisse or Picasso, who enjoys all the fruits of an industrial society, becomes a primitive when he takes a hunk of clay or brush into his hand.
It could not be that the pillars of modern art, the giants of contemporary aesthetic expression suffered from schizophrenia. There was evidence that both Matisse and Picasso and the other kingpins of modern art were well adjusted to contemporary modes of living, in fact, to the luxuries of “streamlined” surroundings.
I was still more perplexed by the reactions of “art lovers” to various types of art. I heard a woman, who was educated in a finishing school and conditioned to either classical or Victorian art, exclaim, “How beautiful!”, “What great feeling!”, “Such wonderful originality!”, as she gazed at a Picasso painting. I witnessed another heaping great praise on a Kandinsky abstract, but when I visited her home, I found it filled with French Provincial furniture. These two examples are typical of thousands of our contemporaries.
Finding out what made the “modem” artists do the things they do and what caused “art lovers” to behave as they do, became my primary goal.
To get the answers required probing the depths of human motivations. This is why I became interested in people’s attitudes and became a researcher.
In 1935, the Adult Education Program of the Chicago Board of Education gave me the opportunity to fulfill my dream to put art to scientific measurement. Under the auspices of the Adult Education Program, I organized an Art Education Division, and set up a project for conducting studies on the psychological effects of visual media—designs, images and colors. Later a special project was organized for conducting studies on how visual media can be used as aids in motivating people to get interested in adult education. A special unit was formed for developing measuring instruments, testing devices, methods and techniques for evaluating attitudes.
For a short time, I directed a program in connection with the Federal Art Project, for training creative men and women in the graphic arts to communicate. Most of the creative people despised and resisted this program. To communicate meant to them limiting creativity and stifling originality. The program lasted about one year. The projects of the Board of Education were in operation from three to five years.
We were trying to measure attitudes toward adult education, toward citizenship, social studies, traditional and modern art.
A number of studies revealed the attitudes toward “adult education.” They showed that the majority of men and women thought education was meant for the young, not for adults.
I decided to find out whether my book, Living with Art, did not become a best seller because it was not adequately promoted or for other reasons. A choice of one from five books was offered as a prize. This was only one part of the test, but the results of this part were quite revealing. Two of the books were novels, two were on modern art and the fifth was Living with Art. Test results: those respondents with art interests wanted one of the two on modern art. Respondents who had no art interests, about 80% of the sample, wanted one of the novels. Living with Art came out with a preference of 6%. It was quite clear that a very large majority of men and women were not interested in Living with Art.
This happened in 1940. I was busy directing a number of projects—with test forms, teaching plans and community programs; but “mercenary” ideas—had suddenly crept into my mind. What did this mean? I was toying with the idea of offering my services to commerce. I felt very guilty about this. I had been trained to be a teacher and researcher and had been conditioned to serve the general good, not do anything merely for a profit. Even my creative efforts in painting were to communicate, to inform, and seeking payment was supposed to be incidental or a necessary evil.
I was conscious of the fact that the Adult Education Program opened great vistas to me. I felt greatly obligated to the individuals who made it possible for me to have the experimental projects that gave me opportunities few persons have in a lifetime. I have always felt obligated to the late Elizabeth Wells Robertson and to Vernon Bowyer of the Chicago Board of Education, and I appreciated the aid I received from Harry T. Fultz and the late Clem O. Thompson of the University of Chicago. I felt close to the Adult Education movement and to the men and women who led it. It was difficult for me to break away.
However, “Pearl Harbor” accomplished for me what I couldn’t do for myself. I was called to help save the world from Tojo and Hitler. While trying to teach soldiers how to recognize aircraft, how to camouflage themselves and how to do a job, no matter what it might be, in the shortest time and in the most efficient way, I had plenty of time to think. Although my thoughts were often interrupted, because I had an “errand to do” for the Colonel, I still found time for meditation.
During the war I met business people. In talking to them, I found out, much to my surprise, that they were investing millions on the basis of hunches. They discussed consumer products in rational terms. One told me that if you make the best mousetrap, the people will come to your door.
Very few had heard of the unconscious mind and of unconscious motivations. Most of those I talked with, some executives of large corporations, could not believe that a package, trademark or color could mean the difference between success and failure. By the time the war was almost over, I was convinced that I could make a major contribution to business.
However, I knew nothing about running a business. Like the character in search of an author,
