{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":205,"pdf_page":213,"physical_index":213,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0ab2d843b3d8c089b042a10e8d1397e48f211976aaa46db67f12cba1fea6c2e9"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"One way to track the development of consumer product testing over the course of the twentieth century is by examining the evolution of the most popular and influential publication devoted to the testing of consumer products, Consumer Reports, along with its parent organization, Consumers Union. Both were very much at the center of the development of product testing as a mainstream, institutionalized practice in the postwar period. As the NBS consumer circulars became templates for CR, so CR became a model for product testing in other publications. Of course, interpreting the content of product testing, as it shifted over time, as indicative of changing consumer attitudes toward commodities raises the question of just how representative CR was of views among the great buying public. But Consumers Union was, from the end of the Second World War onward, increasingly concerned with expanding its membership and so tried to be finely attuned to the public mood. As CU moved from being an advocacy organization with an attached publication to being primarily the publisher of a magazine, attracting a sustainable subscriber base became a matter of great importance (N. D. Katz 1977).17 The organization consequently became very sensitive to CR reader preferences and began to employ market research to better tailor consumer product testing to the interests and tastes of the public. The history of Consumer Reports and Consumers Union, then, to a fair degree does reflect broader changes in the orientation of consumer capitalism. The general trend evident over the history of the organization, and its increasingly popular magazine, was toward greater focus on the scientific testing of consumer durables, with less attention given to the political and social context of consumption and production.\n\n1. Historical Trends in Consumer Product Testing in Consumer Reports\n\n1.1. Rapid Expansion\n\nThe growth in the number of CR subscribers, especially in the postwar period, was dramatic. In 1946 the magazine had 80,000 subscribers. By 1949, the number had increased to 250,000; by 1950, to 400,000; and in 1957, there were close to 1,000,000 subscribers (N. D. Katz 1977, p. 308). In the early postwar years, CR became commonly available in public libraries, so the number of consumers consulting the magazine was certainly much greater than the number of subscribers. Moreover, as noted earlier, test results published in the magazine undoubtedly spread further afield by word of mouth. The influence of CR on consumer purchasing decisions was considerable. Its editor, Robert Brady, writing in CR in 1955, estimated that between 5 percent and 10 percent of “buying units” in the country were influenced by CR—a figure that Brady thought greatly underestimated the true extent of CR’s influence on consumer decisions.18 Following the success of CR, other periodicals began to introduce product testing, and testing of consumer goods soon became common across the public sphere.\n\nProduct Testing and Product Regularization\n\n205","previous_page":204,"next_page":206}