THE OTHER "CHILD STUDY": Figuring Children as Consumers in Market Research, 1910s–1990s |
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Authors: | Daniel Thomas Cook |
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Institution: | University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana |
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Abstract: | This article examines how notions of "the child" were constructed in marketing research literature from the 1910s through the 1990s. Drawing on children's industry trade literature, market reports and books, I argue that children have become increasingly portrayed as individualized, autonomous consumers. Over this time period, the desire for consumer products becomes figured by industry observers and researchers as a mode of children's "self expression.'The analytic isolation of "the child" in the persona of a "consumer" authorizes a new morality for consumption by construing children's desire for goods as preexistent and thus natural. |
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