A New Brand of Business: Charles Coolidge Parlin, Curtis Publishing Company, and the Origins of Market Research (review)

"Market research," writes author Douglas Ward, "did not appear with the waving of a magic wand." As Ward contends, "It had to be sold as a necessity for modern commerce" (p. 6). Ward's book details the efforts of Charles Coolidge Parlin and his employer, Curtis Publishing Company, to pioneer and legitimize this "new brand of business" in the early 1900s. Exhaustively researched, this book draws upon a wealth of material, including sources gleaned from the Curtis Publishing Company Records (housed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania), the Curtis Publishing archives in Indianapolis, and John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History at Duke University. Ward is not the first to recognize Parlin's critical role in the development of market research. In fact, as Ward notes, Parlin, both in his lifetime and posthumously, has received many accolades, including induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1953. But though Parlin already has been widely recognized (at least in marketing circles) as one of the key founders of market research, Ward makes an important contribution to the field by fleshing out for the first time the full story of Parlin's work at Curtis Publishing Company and the challenges he encountered while developing the Division of Commercial Research there. Ward also does a commendable job of putting Parlin's accomplishments in the context of broader cultural and social changes transforming the United States, including the rise of more complex business structures and the shift to an increasingly consumer society.

With a flair for storytelling, Ward discusses the ambiguities surrounding Parlin's initial job assignment in 1911, when Curtis Publishing's Advertising Department gave this former high school principal the vague injunction to research nationwide markets. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, founder and president of Curtis Publishing, gave Parlin enormous latitude in developing the parameters of his job. While this was a sign of Curtis' trust in Parlin, the relative freedom to shape what would become the Division of Commercial Research was, however, also daunting. Curtis fully recognized that many of his peers (including some of his own colleagues) distrusted the value of market research and dismissed it as not worth the money (pp. 76-7). Parlin worked diligently to justify market research and make it more of a science.

Among Parlin's many accomplishments were his mammoth industries, among the most famous of which were studies of department stores, the farm implement market, and the fledgling automobile industry. Parlin and his coworkers not only created these statistical reports but also strove (with considerable success) to convince businesses to actually use them. As Ward accurately notes, businesses in the early 1900s craved solid information about consumer buying habits, purchasing power, competitor data, etc. Parlin's research could help fill this information void, but only if businesses could be convinced that the analyses provided were indeed insightful, useful, and accurate. As Ward nicely details, Parlin, on top of his many other roles, thus became an expert salesman, a missionary of sorts preaching the virtues of scientific market research to consumers and companies alike. Gradually, Parlin succeeded in teaching people to trust in market research . . . at least, research that was responsibly conducted by his employer, Curtis Publishing, the juggernaut that owned the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies' Home Journal, among other magazines.

Expertly familiar with the considerable literature on the role of Curtis Publishing in American journalism, Ward lends new insights into how and why Curtis Publishing was able to sustain its luster for so long. As Ward documents, one of the reasons underlying the company's prolonged success was its competitive subscription rates. Early in his career at Curtis Publishing, Parlin recognized the feasibility and attractiveness of selling subscription rates actually below costs, provided that advertising revenues could...