Abstract:

Marketing research is perhaps 50 years old. But almost all the pre-war surveys were concerned with domestic consumers and not with industrial customers. Although there is little doubt that some research inquiries into industrial markets were undertaken in Britain before 1939, it cannot really he said that industrial marketing research as a separate management tool emerged anywhere in Europe until after the 1939-45 war. The development of industrial marketing research in Europe can he viewed at three levels; the individual firm, the agency and government.