In my last blog I had spoken about projective techniques. Taking forward from where I left, I would like to bring up the adaptations required for use of projective techniques in research.
- You need to get deeper into the study: In situations where you are asked to use projective techniques to study consumer behaviour and responses, go beyond the conventional and direct statements. You need to think beyond the personifications and sentence completions.
- Use offbeat techniques for projection: Rather than actually using the conventional and the standard projective techniques, try to use more off beat techniques. For instance, for a market survey, a logo quiz would be a good idea. These offbeat techniques can sometimes bring out thoughts and that information which would be difficult to extract out otherwise.
- Look for cultural cues: New techniques that may generate interest from the respondents can be subjective to the trends and the culture. The specific kind of movies or music that is popular in a particular area can be used for research. For instance, association of a particular song with a product is a good way to project the preference of the respondent without actually putting up explicit questions which he may be hesitant to answer.
Projective techniques do not belong to research and we know that they have been adopted in research from another discipline. It isn’t home ground for these tools. There is still a need to develop tools and benchmarks in research against which these projective techniques can be analysed. There is still scope and more than that need to design newer techniques that are specifically applicable and productive in market research and for the audience under study. We need to understand the techniques that dominate the field of psychology may not be completely applicable in market research with a lot of modification.