Recent Results of Consumer Surveys in the United States

Abstract

I feel very much among friends here today having spent a year in Germany some ten years ago, working with Professor Schmölders. We have done surveys in the United States on consumer attitudes since World War II. I use the word “we” loosely, of course, because I have been connected with the Survey Research Center since 1958 only. We have found out an awful lot over the years about why consumers do what they do, and that is the actual purpose of our research at the Survey Research Center: not so much to make specific forecasts, but to understand consumers and why they do what they do. In other words, our objective is to make of economics a study of people and how, in the mass, people make decisions that change the economy.

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