Market Research: The 'handmaiden' of corporatism?

I want to explore how market research can create the kind of 'thick' value that Umair Haque talked about in his The New Capitalist Manifesto.

Can market research create the kind of value that genuinely - in the long run - contributes towards creating a better shared prosperity?

It's an important question for me personally and not that one that I plan to answer in one post. It's something I want to think about and explore.

It's a thought that I want to one day put into action.

As a starting point, I'm reminded of one of the first essays that I had to write for my university degree. The title of the essay was something like Was anthropology the handmaiden of colonialism?

The implication of the title was that, whilst the early anthropologists were often motivated by genuine intellectual curiosity and even a desire to understand and thus humanise their 'subjects', their findings were ultimately put to use by colonial overlords to subjugate and control those same 'subjects'.

I feel that the same is true of market research. My motivations for getting involved in the industry was an interest in people and what makes us tick. Any commercial aspect was secondary. I wasn't thinking about trying to sell stuff.

I doubt I'm alone. I've met many other like me. The market researchers in Century of the Self seemed similar. Many planners are the same.

But regardless of what motivates us, market research, or advertising, are not intellectual exercises. They are commercial operations. What we discover about people is ultimately put to use in an attempt to influence people to consumer more. We now know that that kind of lifestyle is unsustainable. It isn't in society's long-term interests. It arguably plays on their base motivations without making any attempt to cultivate a vision of 'the good life'.

The trouble with market research is that - in the end - we have no say over how our findings are used. We don't ultimately own our own thinking. So does this mean that market research will always be at the mercy of the client's intention?

Is the only way for market research to add real value to work with the right clients?