Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: Consumer Engineers and the Transnational Origins of Consumer Capitalism 1
4. 1. The Origins of “Consumer Engineering”: Interwar Consumer Capitalism in Transatlantic Perspective 20
5. Section One. Transformations in Marketing and Consumer Research
6. The Rise of Consumer Engineering: American Marketing at Midcentury (1930s–1960s) 41
7. 2. The Art of Asking Why: The “Vienna School” of Market Research and Transfers in Consumer Psychology 44
8. 3. From Mass Persuasion to Engineered Consent: The Impact of “European” Psychology on the Cognitive Turn in Marketing Thought 73
9. 4 Hidden Persuaders? Market Researchers as “Knowledge Entrepreneurs” between Business and the Social Sciences 99
10. Section Two. Designing for Sustained Demand
11. “Tastemakers” or “Wastemakers”? Commercial Design at Midcentury (1930–1960) 131
12. 5. The Designer as Marketing Expert: European Immigrants and the Professionalization of Industrial and Graphic Design in the United States 133
13. 6. The Commercialization of Social Engineering? Adapting Radical Design Reform to American Mass Marketing 163
14. 7. “Streamlining Everything”: Design, Market Research, and the Postwar “American” World of Goods 193
15. Section Three. Transatlantic Return Voyages
16. Bridging Transatlantic Divides: Bringing Consumer Modernity “Back” to Europe 219
17. 8. Corporate America and the International Style: The Transnational Network of Knoll Associates between Europe and the United States 222
18. 9. The “Return” to Europe: Emigrés as Cultural Translators and the Transformation of Postwar European Marketing 243
19. Consumer Engineering: Challenges and Legacies 271
20. Acknowledgments 281
21. Abbreviations for Archival Sources 285
22. Notes 287
23. Index 359