Marketing Research in the Scientific and Technical Information Services Industry: Development and Future Directions

The general availability of government‐sponsored studies on scientific and technical information (STI) provides an opportunity to trace the development of “marketing research” in a specific industry. A review of this research tradition revealed two major orientations; a series of “user”‐oriented studies, followed by “systems”‐oriented studies. It is suggested that traditional STI user studies may have produced “myopic” research results, and systems studies may have produced “macropic” research results for STI policy decisions. An emerging “managerial” orientation is identified which espouses the definition of a more meaningful unit of analysis as the focus of future research efforts.