Freud on Madison Avenue: Motivation Research and Subliminal Advertising in America

by Lawrence R. Samuel

Book Overview

What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century, many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s, Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool, promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812242513
• ISBN13: 9780812242515
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"