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Mark Abrams (27 April 1906 – 25 September 1994) was a British social scientist and market research expert who pioneered new techniques in statistical surveying and opinion polling.
Abrams received a scholarship to attend The Latymer School, then studied economics at the London School of Economics. He went on to complete a PhD in early modern English economic history under the supervision of R. H. Tawney in 1929.Mark Abrams, 'The Gold and Silver Thread Monopolies of James I', unpublished PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, 1929.
During World War II Abrams was employed first in the BBC Overseas Research Department, then at the Psychological Warfare Board, where he carried out government surveys into working-class diets under rationing and the impact of bombing on civilian morale, and also commissioned covert psychological analysis into the mind of Adolf Hitler. His studies of food consumption during the war contributed to the establishment of the National Food Survey in 1940.
Abrams returned to the London Press Exchange in 1946 to direct its research department as an independent subsidiary consultancy, Research Services Ltd. By the early 1960s the company employed over ninety members of staff and produced surveys for 300 clients a year, including academic as well as commercial, political, and public sector organisations.Stefan Schwarzkopf, 'The Statisticalization of the Consumer in British Market Research, c. 1920–1960: Profiling a Good Society', in Glen O'Hara and Tom Crook (eds.), Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 144–62. Research Services Ltd. was commissioned by Monica Felton to undertake social surveys prior to the building of Peterlee new town and the establishment of The Sun newspaper.Lawrence Black, 'The Impression of Affluence: Political Culture in the 1950s and 1960s', in Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton (eds.) An Affluent Society? Britain's Post-War 'Golden Age' Revisited (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 99; Mark Clapson, 'The Rise and Fall of Monica Felton, British Town Planner and Peace Activist, 1930s to 1950s', Planning Perspectives, 30:2 (2015): 216. Abrams, along with contemporary pollsters such as Henry Durant of the British Institute of Public Opinion, gained a reputation as an expert authority on market research and mass communication techniques in Britain, and published widely in academic journals as well as newspapers and the popular press.Joe Moran, 'Mass Observation, Market Research, and the Birth of the Focus Group 1937–1997', Journal of British Studies 47:4 (2008): 827–51. Two of his most influential market research reports coined the phrase 'teenage consumer',Mark Abrams, The Teenage Consumer (London: London Press Exchange, 1959) and Mark Abrams, Teenage Consumer Spending in 1959 (London: London Press Exchange, 1961). drawing attention to the new significance of a rapidly expanding youth market for products and advertising.Sean Nixon, 'Understanding Ordinary Women: Advertising, Consumer Research and Mass Consumption in Britain, 1948–67', Journal of Cultural Economy, 2:3 (2009): fn. 14, p. 320; David Kynaston, Modernity Britain, 1957–62 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 341. cf. David Fowler, The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in Interwar Britain (Oxford: Routledge, 1995) pp. 93–94 Abrams was one of the founding members of the Market Research Society and an advisor of the Consumers' Association. Research Services Ltd. (later known as RSL) was one of the founder companies of Ipsos MORI.
From the mid-1950s Abrams became closely connected with the Labour Party and carried out many of their private opinion polls, first with the modernisers in the party aligned with Hugh Gaitskell and then Harold Wilson, for whom he worked on the development of Labour's publicity campaign for the 1964 general election.Dominic Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 67–70.
Abrams left his chairmanship of Research Services Limited in 1970 to become Director of the Survey Research Unit at the Social Science Research Council, under Michael Young. Between 1971 and 1975 he worked on the 'Quality of Life in Britain' surveys, which included the innovative use of 'subjective social indicators' to track perceptions of social change.Scott Anthony, 'Governing for Happiness: Mark Abrams, Subjective Social Indicators and the Post-war Explosion of 'Middle-Opinion', in Don Leggett and Charlotte Sleigh (eds.), Scientific Governance in Britain, 1914–79 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 274–94. Between 1976–1985, Abrams was Research Director at the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology, King's College London, where he undertook studies of living standards among people aged 65 and over. He was also Vice-President of the Policy Studies Institute between 1978 and 1994.
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