About the project
St Mary’s University has been working with The Archive of Market and Social Research (AMSR) Marketing Committee for the past three years to encourage social historians and business, marketing, and communications academics to make use of the resources available in the archive.
The original purpose of the archive was to cater to the marketing services sector, but a series of research projects completed by St Mary's academics and students found that the information would also prove useful to universities by enhancing the research and learning in business and social science programmes while aiding students’ preparation for their careers.
As such, St Mary’s conducted two projects; the first was to explore how the content relating to marketing and market research is sourced from Libraries and online to and within universities. Librarians from 14 universities were interviewed in a qualitative survey, and it was found that academics centre their research in the ‘real world’ meaning they are more likely to use sources that provide past and current research about brands and markets.
The follow-up projects involved interviewing social historians and business management, marketing and communications academics and researchers. The results found that there are over 700 academics and 50,000 students per semester who would potentially use the archive as a reference for project work and dissertations.
This research is ongoing and the next project is to assess the effectiveness of online research resources and why AMSR has a wider outreach.
From the archive
Related newsletter and other articles about how St Mary's and AMSR work together:
Academic staff from the Faculty of Business and Law at St Mary’s University, Twickenham have been involved in writing and editing The Routledge Companion to Market Research.