As competition among magazines and newspapers stiffened in the early twentieth century,and as advertisers increasingly sought the most appropriate,as well as the largest,audiences for their products,Curtis Publishing turned to market research to help back up its claims.During his first several years at Curtis,Charles Coolidge Parlin,the manager of the company's Division of Commercial Research,concentrated on understanding the workings and interactions of the manufacturer,the wholesaler,the retailer and the consumer.Between 1911 and 1915,as Parlin conducted studies of agricultural implements,textiles,department stores,automobiles and foodstuffs,though,he gathered anecdotal information about the readership of the Post and Journal.See,for instance,Charles Coolidge Parlin,“Agricultural Implements,”1911,CP,Box 19;Parlin,“Department Store Lines:Textiles,”Vol.B;Parlin and Henry Sherwood Youker,“Automobiles,”vol.1B,1914,CP,Box 30;and Parlin and Youker,“Food Products and Household Supplies,”Vols.B and C,1915,CP,Boxes 39,40.
He didn't attempt to conduct an analysis of the readers of the two magazines,but instead talked with many merchants,jobbers and manufacturers around the country about the content of the magazines and their perceptions of its readers.He didn't seem as interested in finding out anything new about the magazines,but rather in confirming their importance to readers and to businesses.In Selling Forces in 1913,Curtis said that 3,000 merchants were asked by an impartial investigator(presumably Parlin):“What periodicals are mentioned most by your customers when referring to advertisedgoods?”Of those respondents,679 said the Journal,675 said the Post,and many said both.See Selling Forces,p.241.“Everybody reads the Post,”Parlin wrote,“not only the merchants and their buyers but the girls at the counter.”He also wrote that department store managers considered both the Journal and the Post“authorities on quality,”and they pored over the magazines to try to pick up tips for their newspaper advertising and to apply to their salesmanship.“Tenth Annual Conference,”p.36;“Department Store Lines:Textiles,”Vol.B,pp.131-136;“Attitudes Toward The Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post as Advertising Mediums,”1916,CP,Box 45.
He later compiled snippets of his interviews in a book for advertising representatives,and he urged representatives to familiarize themselves with the quotes before meeting with potential advertisers.Many merchants considered Curtis publications required reading because they knew that their customers read the magazines and would begin asking for the products they saw advertised.“I don't want to flatter your publication,”an Ohio merchant told Parlin,“but somehow the people have such confidence in what they see advertised in the columns of the Ladies'Home Journal and the Post,that we have to carry them.I take both publications and read the ads,for I know that after a thing has appeared two or three times on one of these magazines it will be called for.”A drapery buyer for a large department store considered the Journal“a necessity next only to the Bible.The customers are very well educated on quality now,and unless a salesman thoroughly understands his job,the customer will know more about it than he will...”
Parlin conducted the company's first readership study in 1915 and 1916,a mail survey of 31,000 readers of the Country Gentleman,a farm publication that Curtis had purchased a few years before.He followed that,in 1919 and 1920,with a study of the Public Ledger newspaper of Philadelphia.The two reports seem to be among the first full-fledged commercial readership surveys done by a U.S.