Herta Herzog

Biographical Information

"Herta Herzog was a psychologist and market researcher who played an influential role in bringing qualitative market research to Madison Avenue advertising firms. Herzog, born in Vienna in 1910, studied psychology at the University of Vienna during the 1920s and worked for the Research Center for Economic Psychology conducting social and market surveys. During her time in Vienna and after her emigration to the United States, her work was closely connected to that of Paul Lazarsfeld, to whom she was married between 1934 and 1945. Upon arrival in America in 1935, she conducted audience research for the Radio Project and began to build her career as a media and advertising expert. Herzog is credited with pioneering qualitative research methods such as focus groups in marketing campaigns and, with Ernst Dichter and others, was one of the early champions of Motivation Research. Herzog was keenly interested in the psychological attachments consumers developed to goods and the meanings they invested in them. During the 1950s and 1960s she held influential positions at McCann-Erickson, an advertising corporation whose marketing department she had joined in 1943. By the mid-1960s, Herzog had joined Jack Tinker Partners, a marketing think tank affiliated with McCann. She eventually moved back to Europe and returned to academic research during the 1970s to 1980s." wiki

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Related Sourcewatch

• Voice of America