Although somewhat peripheral to the development of motivational/qualitative research (at least until several decades later), another ‘thread’ arises from the early work of the Mass-Observation movement in Britain, founded by Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings in 1937. These researchers pioneered an anthropological approach that is echoed today in the use of various ethnographic techniques. It is tantalising to wonder what might have developed from their work had the war years of 1939–1945 not intervened. Perhaps Mass-Observation might have been registered as a market research company earlier than it was, in 1949.