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-Observation7 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.