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 | INTRO TO PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES (CALL FOR DATES FIRST) | |
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The marketing community has always conceded the existence of emotional factors
which drive brand selection and loyalty. The imagery attached to brands goes far beyond product attributes, functional benefits and price to sell products. All products and brands develop personas in consumers'
minds. All project varying user images which differ by audience. Members of one audience may buy a product because it makes them feel affluent. Members of another, which values thrift, buy a brand because it makes them feel like smart shoppers.
Consumers buy products with imagery that is either consistent with their positive view of themselves (“I’m sophisticated and therefore buy this type of wine to complete my image”) or which conveys a plausible aspirational model - something they would like to be and believe they could conceivably achieve (“I can be a real ladies’ man if I drive a sports car.”)
Perhaps the most powerful influencing factor in purchasing habits is the subtle, often-overlooked product/consumer relationship. A vital brand has a “relationship” with loyal users not unlike a healthy relationship between two people. People maintain ongoing affiliations as long as each person in a relationship feels as though the other contributes positively to his/her sense of self. Relationships fall apart when perceived negatives begin to outweigh the rewards of the association.
For example, being coupled with a successful friend casts a positive halo onto someone who values success.
If you want to build a strong Brand Equity relationship, you must first understand the core values of your target market. In marketing, we often talk about this as “laddering up to emotional end benefits."
These are the unspoken consumer values that are the glue to brand loyalty because they validate the user's self perceptions.
But it’s not enough to know what emotional end benefits drive a category – to be effective at marketing we need to understand which concrete features and functional benefits of our brand (as well as the brand as a whole) ‘provide’ these feelings most strongly, which do so without simultaneously creating emotional anti-benefits (aversive feelings), and where the competition
falls in this emotional terrain.
Understanding this picture has very much been marketer’s ‘Holy Grail’, long sought after as a treasured prize, but surrounded with a kind of religious mystique which defies logical pursuit.
This is the case because there are MANY obstacles which prevent consumers from discussing
their emotional reasons for purchase - primarily social desirability bias,
lack of conscious awareness of these motivations, the need to perceive
themselves as a totally rationale consumer, and sometimes a concern that the
knowledge could be used against the consumer's best interest. A thorough understanding of emotional benefits, of the psychology of the consumer’s
difficulty in telling you about them, and the mastery of a set of techniques
called 'projectives' is required to gain knowledge in this
area.
This interactive one day workshop is designed
to introduce the student to the history and development of projective techniques,
the theory behind the application of projectives to qualitative research,
the parameters and variables which are manipulated by the researcher in projective techniques,
& techniques for managing respondent anxiety levels and encouraging a safe, cooperative atmosphere.
The required mindset of the moderator is reviewed, as are methods for preparing
for projectives and introducing them to clients. The instructor
demonstrates two examples of projective techniques and an important preparatory
exercise, walking through each one step by step and allowing students to
practice each thereafter. The day culminates with a review of theory
and instructions for using what has been learned to create one's own unique
brand of projective techniques. Interpretation of projectives is briefly
reviewed.
Introduction to Projectives assumes basic familiarity with a focus group environment. Although not required, 20 hours of focus group experience (either in front or behind the mirror) is recommended as a pre-requisite to the course.
This course provides a very firm theoretical background and initial practice in
the use of projective techniques for moderators with little or no experience in
using them. The Advanced Special Edition, in contrast, is intended to take
the student with a strong background in moderating and projectives (or those
having taken the Introductory workshop) and expose them to 10 very specific
projective techniques, giving them the opportunity to practice each in a
supervised atmosphere, and to learn to interpret their marketing implications.
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