Comments:
Thanks to Ruth Slepian for keeping us together & reunions all these years!
I retired (again) from my Emeritus Prof position at SUNY Geneseo after my worse ever MS attack in the Fall of 2015. In July 2017 we sold our (too) large log home overlooking Conesus Lake nd built our new retirement home here in Canandaigua, just 25 miles east. Our home is smaller but also has a full basement & is still plenty roomy. Maintenance free! With Thompson Hosp just 1.5 blocks away and the Canandaigua VAMC just two miles away, we are blessed with great health care. That's a good thing because my MS gets progressively worse each year. Using a walker now but still drive via hand controls. And I don't need to run an 8-min mile to keep my fingers pecking away on my two MacBookPros! I am selling 5 or 6 articles and short stories each year and will soon be finished with book #11, Three Wise Men, a =n Iraq War sequel to my 1988 Vietnam war novel, Shades of Gray.
My editors up in St Paul MN just sent me this graphic for the front cover of my book — A Nation of Numbers: The Development of Marketing Research in America. In a few days they should also have the title & my name on it. Maybe classmates would find it interesting. I am getting so excited about having the complete, bound copy in my hot little hands — after working on it, of & on, for more than 20 years.
Here is one of the 6 special Profiles I wrote for the Appendix to the book. This one is about my memories of Princeton.
Memories of Princeton, MR Capital of the World
Paul A. Scipione, Ph.D.
So many memories and so little space!
The first time I drove through Princeton was on my first visit to Rutgers University, only 15 miles further north on Route 27. My wife Linda and I moved to New Jersey after I finished my MA at SUNY Buffalo in August 1971 and entered the Ph.D. program at Rutgers. New Jersey seemed hopelessly confusing: highways configured like a giant bowl of spaghetti, complete with “jug handles” and “Jersey safety walls,” wizzing past cities and towns whose names seemed to change every few blocks, always crowded and always noisy. But Princeton was much smaller and tranquil, with classy street names, beautiful ivy covered campus buildings and stately old homes. Too bad we couldn’t afford to live in Princeton!
I really got to know Princeton during my second semester at Rutgers, when one of my professors urged me to write a monograph about the dangers of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War (still ongoing). That’s when I discovered that Dr. Herbert Abelson of Opinion Research Corp (ORC) in Princeton was the only American who had ever conducted a survey among Vietnamese civilians during the war. I called him but was told that Dr. Abelson had left to form his own MR company, Response Analysis Corp (RAC). Wow, lots of research companies in Princeton!
I called Dr. Abelson, who was very cordial and invited me to lunch in Princeton. We broke bread at The Grotto, a small Italian restaurant on Witherspoon Street and immediately became friends. Herb had spent three months in Saigon in 1967 and I had spent 1969-70 at Bien Hoa and Phu Bai, two US bases 450 miles apart at opposite ends of South Vietnam. Herb invited me back to the RAC offices for a tour. RAC was growing quickly and had to lease space in several buildings in Research Park on Rt. 206, just across from Princeton Airport. After the tour we talked in his office, where I found out that we were both pipe smokers. Herb asked me when I anticipated finishing my Ph.D. at Rutgers and I told him hopefully by the end of the 1972-73 academic year. “Fine, but don’t take another position before talking to us. You have just the skills we need.”
And that’s exactly what happened. My professors at Rutgers (without talking to me) had found me a position as an Asst. Prof. at Arizona State University in Tempe, which probably would have been ok. But they didn’t do it for me. They did it to “plant the Rutgers flag” in a new part of the country. “Sorry,” I told them, “but I already found a position in Princeton.” They were all smiles until I told them “It’s at a private research company, not Princeton University.” “Why would you do something stupid like that?” they asked. I was a pioneer. Now four decades later, a record percentage of newly minted Ph.Ds are heading to the private sector!
Linda (school library director) and I bought a modest home in Edison and then five years later upgraded to a beautiful brick-and-cedar shake colonial on a cul-de-sac in Metuchen, within walking distance of the train station. We loved it there and I was able to commute to three different jobs without having to move. Our daughter Leigh was born in 1978 and eventually our grandson Chris. We became his Legal Guardians and raised him. But the drive to Princeton kept getting longer and more tedious, increasing from less than 25 minutes to more than 45. Every company in the world, especially MR firms, wanted a “Princeton” address. It got ridiculous. Eventually there were companies 20+ miles from Princeton, not even in the same county, zip code or area code, that claimed to be located in Princeton. New employees were advised where to live, based on semi-impermeable N-S barriers (Routes 1, 27, 206 and the Jersey Turnpike), and E-W barriers (Rt. 22, I-195 and I-287). But who could afford a home in Princeton?
The restaurants and cultural amenities (McCarter Theater; art galleries) and shopping (Palmer Square; studly Rolex and Omega watches at LaVake’s) were great. I fell in love with Lahiere’s French restaurant on Witherspoon, but unfortunately that has now closed. But the Peacock Inn on Bayard, Nassau Inn on Palmer Square (Yankee Doodle Tap Room with genuine Norman Rockwell painting) and the Alchemist & Barrister on Witherspoon are still around. And of course there is the incomparably great ice cream at Thomas’s Sweets and the dozen plus world cuisines in the basement cafeteria in Frist Hall on the Princeton campus. We MR types, though, had our own favorite bistros and watering holes, where we could congregate to hear all the latest MR rumors and scandals – the Tiger’s Tale on 206-North and the Rocky Hill Inn. For those MR persons with active libidos, there were several no-tell motels out on Rt. 1 where one could grab some afternoon delight while their cross-tabs ran back at the office. There were so many MR people in and around Princeton that during the 1980s we had our own touch football and softball leagues, but considered ourselves too “professional” for a bowling league.
And whenever you had a slow afternoon, there were fascinating sites to visit nearby. Places like 112 Mercer Street (Einstein’s home), the Institute for Advanced Studies (Lovers Lane), the Tokamak Breeder Reactor Lab on the east side of Rt. 1, and the former RCA Labs, where color TV was invented. The most fascinating was the former Lindbergh home, where the infamous kidnapping of the Lindbergh’s first born son happened in 1932. It is now called “High Fields” and has been a state home for delinquent teenage boys for decades. Or you could drive north on Rt. 27 and watch the Princeton rowing teams practice along Lake Carnegie.
But the main attractions of Princeton were the thousands of the world’s smartest people. At lunchtime, probably at least 50% of the pedestrians around you had a Ph.D. and Princeton was the home of more than a dozen Nobel laureates. Everything from poets to rocket scientists. In fact, a close friend (and fellow ham radio operator), once took me to the nondescript two-story office building that he worked in near the Princeton Shopping Center on North Harrison. I knew he was well paid and that everyone in that office had a Ph.D. in either mathematics or computer program-ming, but the sign out front revealed absolutely nothing about what the folks inside did. That was probably a good thing. Because my friend leaned over and whispered in my ear: “I program our spy satellites.” Wow, and he wasn’t even wearing a secret decoder ring!
I miss Princeton these days. I wish Dr. Gallup was still alive so we could meet again in the Service lounge at Princeton Volkswagen. But now Princeton is full of Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and even a few Ferraris and Maseratis. Linda and I both drive Subarus so we fit right in around Conesus Lake and Geneseo!
Here is one of the 6 special Profiles I wrote for the Appendix to the book.
A Nation of Numbers.
The History of Marketing Research in America
Paul A. Scipione, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, School of Business, SUNY Geneseo
America, the New World, an expanse so big that it begged to be explored, settled and tamed. It made sense that a place seemingly so limitless encouraged our obsession with measuring. Maybe it was our Manifest Destiny to be a nation of numbers and the birthplace of marketing research.
Riddle: Why has it taken so long for someone to write the definitive history of a business that now exceeds $24 billion/year in the U.S. ($78+ per person); that is growing at twice the rate of GDP; that now employs more than 150,000 Americans; that interviews nearly 75% of adults each year; whose numbers and statistics are used by virtually 100% of large and medium-sized companies; and whose studies touch all of our lives, every day? Dr. Paul Scipione’s A Nation of Numbers solves this puzzling gap by providing lively glimpses of the colorful and often controversial pioneers who made it their life’s work to measure and analyze the experiences, preferences and behavior of Americans.
Scipione paints the development of the marketing research field against the backdrop of social, cultural, political, economic and technological events that formed the 20th century American mosaic. A multitude of factors and events came together to make America a nation of numbers and the birthplace of marketing research: Rapid and diverse population growth, much of it attributable to millions of European immigrants. The birth of an American middle-class. Professionalism in management and a bias toward quantification in MBA training. Innovations in manufacturing and transportation that made possible assembly-line production and nationwide distribution. Thriving corporate sales, fierce competition and an obsession with profits. The shift from generic to branded products. Geography, demographics and psychographics. Ratings for the new advertising media of radio and television. And of course the ever-changing opinions and preferences of individual consumers, families and businesses that collectively form the pulse of America.
Scipione describes three distinct eras in the history of commercial MR: Era 1: the Pioneer Era (1900 through 1950); Era 2: the Survey Era (1950 through late 1990s); and Era 3: the Post-Survey Era (late 1990s to the present). Although traditional surveys and focus groups are still used, the MR business has morphed from an analog to digital world, with new tools in big data and advanced analytics, measurement of physiological and brain functions and advances in the neurosciences.
Although filled with easy-to-understand explanations about a wide range of technical research developments, A Nation of Numbers focuses much more on the stories of the men and women who have fed our obsession for statistics, MR pioneers like Herman Hollerith and his key-punching machine; early but sophisticated psychological studies by Dr. Daniel Starch and Dr. John B. Watson; media-research pioneers Arthur C. Nielsen, Sr., Percival White and Archibald Crossley; innovative pollsters Dr. George Gallup and Elmo Roper; pioneering academic researchers Dr. Paul Lazarsfeld and Dr. George Katona; Dr. Claude Robinson, who left Gallup to form his own company to focus on CPG research; Sol Dutka and Lester Frankel who blended auditing with surveying; numbers gurus Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Hans Zeisel; Bill O’Dell and David Hardin who proved that an MR firm could prosper outside New York City; the perpetual rivalry between psychoanalyst Dr. Ernest Dichter and quant guru Dr. Alfred Politz; innovative John Malec and Gian Fulgoni of UPC scanning fame; litigation research pioneers Dr. Joe Smith and Dr. Herbert Abelson; and hundreds more.
Dr. Scipione spent 20 years, interviewed more than 500 people and combed through thousands of documents to bring us A Nation of Numbers. He had the full cooperation of the leading marketing research professional groups -- Advertising Research Foundation; American Marketing Association; Marketing Research Association, American Association for Public Opinion Research; and the Council of American Survey Research Organizations -- traveled thousands of miles and scanned the Internet.
“It has been a true labor of love,” Scipione says. “The marketing research story is just too colorful, exciting and important to remain untold.”
It is fitting that A Nation of Numbers comes toward the beginning of the 21th century, since the first two decades of the 20th century marked the birth of the MR field. Nation shows us just how far we have come in 100 years. Dr. Scipione also gazes into the crystal ball to speculate on how the MR business is likely to further develop during the next 100 years. But Nation also comes at a time when many business leaders complain about being inundated with too many numbers and consumers worry that marketing researchers have gotten too good at their collective snooping.
A Nation of Numbers gives readers a fascinating glimpse of the marketing researchers whose ultimate obsession is putting us all under their microscopes.
Book Outline
Foreword by Dr. Herbert I. Abelson (Princeton University; retired CEO & Co-Founder of Response Analysis Corp.); Preface by the author, Dr. Paul A. Scipione; Chapter 1: America’s Obsession With Numbers; Chapter 2: The Amazing MR Business; Chapter 3: Precursors to the Development of Marketing Research in America; Chapter 4: The U.S. Census: Government’s Yardstick; Chapter5: American Researchers Discover Consumers, American Business Leaders Discover Research; Chapter 6: Advertising and Psychology: Perfect Together; Chapter 7: Straw Polls and Faulty Sampling: Trouble in Paradise; Chapter 8: Measuring the Media: Crossley, Hooper, Nielsen, Arbitron and Other Ratings Mavens; Chapter 9: Keypunch Cards, Card Sorters and Computers: Quantification Comes to Research-Land; Chapter 10: From Retail Audits to UPC Scanner Research: Measuring Marketshare; Chapter 11: Motivational and Qualitative Research: Alternative Paradigms; Chapter 12: Affluence, Suburbs, Phones and Malls: New Methods for Reaching American Consumers; Chapter 13: The New “Science” of Advertising Research: Impacts of the Television Medium and Physiological Methods; Chapter 14: Multivariate Analysis and Mathematical Modeling: The New Gods of Marketing Research; Chapter 15: The Segmenting and Clustering of America; Chapter 16: Syndicated and Branded Marketing Research; Chapter 17: http://www: The Internet and Marketing Research; Chapter 18: ARF, MRA, AAPOR & CASRO: Standards and Practices in Marketing Research; Chapter 19: Researchers, Clients and the Public: Love-Hate Relationships; Chapter 20: Gazing Into a Crystal Ball: Marketing Research in the 21st Century; Appendix A: A Who’s Who of Marketing Research Practitioners; Appendix B: Who’s Who in MR Academics; Appendix C: Special Profiles: Crossley; Dichter; Gallup; Lazarsfeld; Roper; Starch; The Princeton MR Community; and Appendix D: 12 page photographic section. Indexes of both MR topics and MR people are also included.
About the Author
Dr. Paul A. Scipione, a consumer psychologist, is now Professor Emeritus of Business and Director of the Survey/Research Center at SUNY Geneseo, having retired from a tenured Full Professorship in Marketing at Montclair State University in 2004. A third generation “relative” on the Gallup/Princeton MR “family tree” (Gallup begat ORC that begat RAC), he became interested in the history of the MR field in conversations with George Gallup during the latter years of the research pioneer’s life. His textbook Practical Marketing Research is the only textbook that covers the historical development of MR. Prior to teaching, Dr. Scipione held senior executive positions as SVP/Group Head at Response Analysis Corp, now GfK (Princeton) and Copy Research Director (U.S. offices) at Young & Rubicam Advertising (New York). During his 40+ year career in MR he has directed more than 1,000 studies, including the first-ever nationwide survey of the Baby Boom Generation for agency client N.W. Ayer (1984). He is a graduate of: SUNY Geneseo, (B.S., 1968); the State University of New York at Buffalo (M.A., 1971); and Rutgers University (Ph.D., 1973), where he was a Henry Rutgers Fellow.
2015 by Quirk’s MR Media Corp.
Publisher of Quirk’s Marketing Research Review
(A Nation of Numbers is the first book being published
by the new Business Book Division of Quirk’s)
