Projective psychological techniques are based on the principle of psychological projection – ascription of own feelings, experience, motives and wishes to another object. While describing a product in an indirect way with a help of projective situation, a respondent expresses his own in-depth, probably even unconscious, attitude to it. In qualitative researches many psychological techniques, including projective ones, are used.
Projective methods allow to understand unconscious motives of consumer behavior and in-depth brand apperception aspects. Such methods decrease the risk of “imaginary” answers, shut out rational analysis and disclose real reasons of brand positioning in consumer minds. When projective techniques are not used, any qualitative research appears to be a mere interview and may be criticized soundly.
There are a lot of projective techniques. Here are some examples:
- Association technique is used to reveal product’s specificity, attitude to it, trademark, object under testing – idea, package, commercial, name, etc.
- “Attorneys and prosecutors” is a pretend play which helps to build an extensional vision of product or TM under discussion and discover positive and negative apperception stereotypes.
- “Party” is a projective technique, based on imagination. It helps to compare image of the researched TM with competitive trademarks. It provides information about TM’s market relations as well.
