This book traces the development of market research, its technical resources, its personnel and its organizations. Among its key themes are: * the rise and fall of occupational control * development of new techniques for studying consumers * the impact of ICTs * establishing and maintaining relationships with clients and consumers * the changing contours of industrial competition. This academically and critically rigorous assessment of the market research industry will be of interest across a number of spheres including marketing, organization studies, sociology, consumer behaviour, contemporary economic and social history, and geography and institutional economics.