In the summer 2013 issue of
Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture, Ai Hisano has published a research note on the value of food market studies for historians, "
Negotiating Taste:
Food Market Research in the Hagley Library." She argues that "marketing research can serve as a way to comprehend not only corporate
initiatives but also the political and cultural constructions of eating
and drinking habits and interrelations between producers, distributors,
and consumers." Her research focuses on two Hagley Library collections, the Seagram Company papers and the papers of Ernest Dichter, a psychologist who pioneered the use of motivational research as a marketing tool. Hisano's
Digest research note is of particular interest because she lays out the many scholarly issues into which these materials might provide insight. She concludes,
The marketing studies found in [these] collections articulate how corporate
business activities are closely related to political, economic, and
cultural conditions. . . . To fully understand the dynamics of
global exchanges of information and goods, it is essential to employ
various approaches and methodologies across disciplines. . . . Only if scholars come together from a variety of disciplinary locations,
will we be able to create more intricate pictures of food and drink
histories and their roles in society.
Ai Hisano is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Delaware and a Hagley Fellow. She was a participant in the 2013 BHC Doctoral Colloquium.
