ABSTRACT
A shift in thinking about consumers (from conscious to unconscious) has led to more widespread use of projective and enabling techniques in marketing research instead of declaration- and introspection-based metrics. Projection as a concept and projective techniques as a research tool are grounded in psychology and psychiatry and have been applied in marketing since the 1950s but their role in modern qualitative research is changing. They are used less in diagnosing the consumer and more in analysing the object of research (brand, product category, advertising). The understanding of the unconscious (revealed by projective techniques) also changed. It does not draw from psychoanalytical and clinical approaches (resulting from the consumer’s inner and unaccepted conflicts) but from the cognitive perspective (adaptation to stimuli overload). Both popular and commonly used marketing research techniques and proprietary methods have been discussed. Various types of projective and enabling techniques have been reviewed (applied in an individual and in a group setting, verbal and non-verbal, relational and non-relational) along with the principles underlying the introduction of projective and enabling techniques in qualitative research. The rules underlying stimuli selection, the introduction of them to respondents, and the ground rules for their analysis and interpretation have also been set out.
