Qualitative Research: Part 2
Slide 1
In part one of this lecture, I talked about the different types of exploratory research and then
talked about two types of qualitative research: in-depth interviewing and focus groups. Part two
of this lecture will discuss different types of qualitative research methods.
Slide 2
The basic theory behind projective techniques is that people may—for social desirability
reasons—be reluctant to express their true opinions, especially when they are identified with
those opinions. With projective techniques, it’s relatively safer for respondents to provide their
opinions because seemingly those opinions are not self reflective.
Slide 3
This cartoon illustrates the rationale behind projective techniques. The little boy, who believes
that boys are not supposed to be afraid of the dark or scared by nightmares, is unwilling to
express that he has those feelings. However, the teddy bear is not the little boy and does not
need to be brave; as a result, the boy is comfortable assigning those feelings to his teddy bear.
In essence, projective techniques work this way. You are projecting your opinions onto a safe
person or object.
Slide 4
Basically, projective techniques present respondents with ambiguous, unstructured stimuli and
ask them to respond to those stimuli in some fashion. These research techniques were inspired
by the motivation-research binge of the 1950’s. During that period, Ernest Dichter and other
then-famous marketing gurus were proponents of taking a Freudian perspective to understand
consumers and their motivations. Many projective techniques are based on the belief that
people are unaware of their subconscious buying motives and these techniques allow
respondents to reveal these motives in a non-personally-threatening way.
Slide 5
The remainder of this lecture presents many examples of different projective techniques. The
examples fall into five categories: The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)—as called by
psychologists—also is called a cartoon completion test or cartoon technique, word association
test, sentence completion test, unfinished scenario completion, and third-person role playing.
Regardless of technique, the basic rationale behind each one is the same: people are reluctant
or unaware of their true motivations and these techniques allow people to reveal those
motivations.
Slide 6
In this TAT, a supervisor says the following to an office administrator or data entry person or
perhaps clerical person: “Do you think we need to upgrade our word processing software?”
Respondents may have many opinions about upgrades and their necessity, but may be
reluctant to express them or even be unaware of them. By answering ‘as if’ the woman in the
picture, respondents project their beliefs about word processing software upgrades onto her,
which is safer than taking ownership of those opinions. Respondents might project the woman
saying something like, “Software upgrades are a rip off” or “It’s critical to upgrade software
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whenever possible to maintain compatibility.” These ‘as if’ answers project respondents’ true
beliefs about upgrades onto a safe target for those beliefs.
Slide 7
Although I’ll date myself with this example, I recall a time in the 60’s and 70’s when spray
furniture polish was considered an inferior product that provided convenient but lower quality
wood protection. If I continued to hold that belief, then the comment I would project onto the
woman on the right to the question from the woman on the left—“Why do you use that
cleaner?”—might be “Well, I needed to clean this quickly because my mother-in-law is coming
for a visit and I’ll do it properly next week.” Such a response clearly indicates my beliefs about
the inferiority of this product. Alternatively, I might say something like “These spray waxes are
just as good as any paste wax, far easier to use, and cheaper, so why would anybody want to
use anything but this product?” That response suggests an entirely different set of beliefs about
spray furniture waxes.
Slide 8
Another example, which also no doubt dates me, entails metal versus wood tennis racquets.
When introduced back in the 1970s, the advantage of such racquets was that they allowed less
powerful players to hit a tennis ball harder. The issue with metal versus wood could, to some
extent, be considered a macho issue; specifically, ‘real men don’t use steel tennis racquets’.
Asking that question directly in a structured interview might fail miserably because of social
desirability bias. By allowing male respondents to project their answer onto the female to the
right of the male tennis player, researchers might discover that macho-related beliefs made men
in the 1970s reluctant to adopt metal tennis racquets, which would suggest the promotional
efforts and advertising themes necessary to counter these beliefs.
Slide 9
There’s no way to know how someone would respond to this TAT. The issue could be that we
are trying to explore convenience and that having these machines around and readily available
may be great. The issue here could be one of security. The woman could say something like
“We’re more likely to be robbed while you’re doing this than we are if you just keep the money
and wait until the bank is open tomorrow or Monday.” Asking direct questions about safety and
security may not produce answers that reveal people’s true attitudes.
Slide 10
Corvettes have a certain image, their drivers have a certain image, and the rest of us have a
certain image about people who drive Corvettes. Asking direct questions about that image may
not provide answers reflective of people’s true attitudes. Asking Herman, who has a huge smirk,
where he’s going in his new Corvette, allows respondents to give a truer indication of their
images of Corvettes than any direct questioning might solicit.
Slide 11
Consider the long-running and award-winning “Got Milk?” ad campaign. What would have
inspired milk producers to reinforce the idea that milk is a beverage consumed by young, active
people? It’s possible that their researchers used projective devices something like the one
shown on this slide and received responses that indicated it was wise to convince younger,
active people to consume more milk. It’s possible that many respondents gave the answer ‘Ms.
A’ to the question “Would you think Ms. A or Ms. B would drink more milk and why?” because
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she appears older, less active, dowdy, and out of shape. As a result of such responses, milk
producers would have decided to reposition their product so that it would be more attractive to
younger and more active consumers (who comprise a meaningful market segment).
Slide 12
In this TAT example, respondents project comments onto both the husband and the wife. The
dialogue between them may reflect the dynamic between spouses who need new automobile
tires. Back in the 1960s, many respondents of both sexes might have projected the following
conversation onto the couple:

Wife: “The gas station attendant thinks our tires are bald and we need to buy new ones,
what do you think?’

Husband: “I know exactly what we should buy.”
Respondents today might project this very different conversation onto the couple:

Wife: “I looked at our tires and realized they were bald so I went to our local tire shop
and purchased four new 50,000-mile-rated all-weather tires because the brand is highly
rated by Consumer Reports.”

Husband: “Yes dear, whatever you say.”
In many cases, the dynamic of couple decision making has shifted markedly during the last half
century, and unstructured stimuli like this one might reveal that shift. Also, identifying the key
decision maker in the decision to buy new automobile tires would help tire manufacturers to
design and place their ads more effectively.
Slide 13
Apple computers have been completing with Microsoft-OS-based PCs since the early 1980s.
Interestingly, the TAT shown on this slide allows respondents to project what the person on the
right both says and thinks in the response to the person on the left stating he is going to buy an
Apple II computer. Respondents might project the person on the right says something like,
“Well, Apple II isn’t the business standard. You’re much safe with IBM computer architecture”
but thinks something like “Apple computers are so much neater.” By allowing respondents to
project both the statements and the thoughts of the person on the right, marketing researchers
may discover far more about people’s attitudes towards Apple II computers.
Slide 14
This and the next slide show a series of pictures. Researchers ask respondents to concoct a
story consistent with the pictures. In the first set of pictures, it’s unclear whether or not those
price points are meaningful or not and in what way. For example, a respondent might offer the
following story: “A woman goes to the store, sees the $0.49 beauty cream, and knows that such
inexpensive cream can’t be any good. Later, she sees the $5.00 beauty cream, and reluctantly
acknowledges that good beauty cream is that expensive.” Alternatively, a respondent might
offer this story: “A woman sees the $0.49 beauty cream and buys it because she believes all
beauty creams are alike. Later, when she sees the $5.00 beauty cream, she wonders about
women who would be silly enough to pay 10 times more for the same thing in a slightly more
attractive package.” Hence, the story projected onto these two pictures could create vastly
different impressions about women’s sense of the appropriate price points for beauty creams.
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Slide 15 (No Audio)
Slide 16
Here’s an example that addresses an issue that would be absurd to assess with direct
questioning. Supposing an eye glass manufacturer sensed that people associated different
types of people—in terms of income, age, and education—with different styles of glass frames.
If you ask that question directly, people would think you came from Mars! Nonetheless, people
may associate different types of people with different styles of glass frames.
Instead of direct questioning, a researcher could use a projective device suggested by this slide.
First, the researcher would create three similar groups of respondents. Then, one group would
be shown the left-most picture, the second group would be shown the middle picture, and the
third group would be shown the right-most picture. Next, each person in those three groups
would be asked to indicate the age, income, and education of the man in the picture. Finally, the
researcher would compare the average responses among the three groups to determine if
people believe that buyers of glasses with a round-shaped frame tend to make more money and
tend to be older than buyers of glasses with a square or rectangular-shaped frame. If true, then
this finding might improve the design and targeting of ads for glass-frame manufacturers and
distributors. This may sound silly, but people’s attitudes often predict their behaviors, so using
the methods needed for discovering those attitudes can help marketers to design and promote
more attractive products to be sold at appropriate price points.
Slide 17
Another projective device used by marketers is word association. Unlike movie portrayals of a
psychotherapist using word association as part of a therapy session, respondents’ answers are
irrelevant. Instead, what’s of interest is the time needed to answer. The assumption, according
to psychologists like Jung—a student and contemporary of Freud—is that the longer the
response time, the more complex are respondents’ thoughts about the named entity. In
essence, greater response latency equates with being more conflicted about the named entity.
As conflicted people are less like to be loyal buyers, first identifying conflicted consumers and
then studying their related attitudes and behaviors may help marketers to improve their offerings
and promotional efforts.
Slide 18
Sentence completion tasks are totally unstructured and provide no hint about appropriate
responses. Consider the statement “People who drink beer are (fill in the blank).” There are
thousands, if not millions, of word combinations that respondents could use to complete that
sentence. “A man who drinks light beer is (fill in the blank).” If respondents doubt the manliness
of guys who drink light beer, then that doubt might be reflected in the way they complete that
sentence. “Imported beer is most liked by (fill in the blank).” Again, if respondents believe that
imported beers are not consumed by ‘real’ men, then that attitude might be reflected in their
words to complete those sentences. Finally, “A woman will drink beer when (fill in the blank).”
Completions like “…she’s very thirsty and there’s nothing else to drink,” or “at a sports event
and wine is unavailable,” or “…her boyfriend/husband buys a pitcher at a bar and gives her a
glass,” suggest that respondents don’t believe women like beer. If the goal is to understand
people’s attitudes about beer drinkers in general, light beer drinkers, imported beer drinkers,
and female beer drinkers, then this sentence completion task might help assess these attitudes
without asking direct questions that might trigger social desirability response bias.
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Slide 19
As a different example of sentence completion, here are three sentences for automatic teller
machines.
Slide 20
In comparison of sentence completion, unfinished scenarios are more complex. “Bill had just
received a large commission check and because he was out of town was going to deposit it in
an automatic teller machine because (fill in the blank), but his friend told him he should do
something else because (fill in the blank). This completion task relates to the earlier cartoon that
shows two people sitting in a car standing by an ATM, and shows another way to reveal
people’s ATM-related opinions about safety, ability of different banks in different towns to
coordinate service, and the likelihood that deposits are lost, misplaced, or unrecorded for an
excessive period. Direct questions might not reveal anything about people’s general attitudes
about ATMs and using them to make deposits.
Slide 21
The last of these projective devices is third-person role playing. This slide summarizes a classic
example of motivation research from the mid-1950s. In this example, two similar samples of 50
housewives were randomly selected. Both sets of housewives received a shopping list, were
told the list was written by a woman, and then asked to describe that woman. As the slide
shows, the lists were identical except for one product: one list included Nescafe Instant Coffee,
and the other list included Maxwell House Coffee.
Consider trying to assess people’s attitudes about instant coffee. Those Folgers Crystal ads—
which seem to have run for decades—always depict an effort to convince a drip/ground-coffee
drinker that Folgers Instant Coffee is so good that it could receive rave reviews if served at the
best restaurants. The claim is to convince ad viewers that instant coffee is suitable for serving to
their most special guests and as a treat for themselves. In the mid-1950s, people’s opinions
about instant versus drip/ground coffee users were very different. The two respondent groups
projected very different characters on the shopper who purchased instant versus ground coffee.
The housewife who supposedly bought instant coffee was perceived as lazy, a poor purchase
planner, and not an especially good wife; in contrast, the housewife who supposedly bought
ground coffee was perceived as not being lazy and being a good wife. Thus, people’s opinions
about instant coffee were not especially positive in 1956. Interestingly, this study was re-done in
1970, and the results were opposite; the wife who bought instant coffee was seen as modern,
thrifty, and a good spouse, whereas the wife who bought ground coffee was seen as out-oftouch and not an especially good spouse. Comparing the results of the two studies conducted
15 years apart, consumers’ attitudes towards instant coffee changed markedly. This finding
would have been difficult to uncover through more structured questionnaires.
Slide 22
Finally, these last three slides depict a combined effort that shows how one might use both
cartoons (TATs) and sentence completion tasks to sense people’s impressions about something
that they might otherwise respond about in a socially desirable fashion. Consider defensive
driving courses. Publicly, people agree that defensive driving courses are good for society and
that everyone should take such a course. Yet, these projective devices seem to reveal attitudes,
commonly expressed among friends, about the value of defensive driving courses to people
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forced/required to take them. People’s true beliefs about these courses differ markedly from
their social-desirability-biased responses.
Slide 23 (No Audio)
Slide 24
As this summary slide indicates, people’s responses about defensive driving classes are not
especially positive. Question #3 refers to the cartoon from the previous slide in which
respondents are asked to guess what the person sitting in class is thinking; none of the most
frequently given responses are positive. The same is true about Question #4; people’s stated
versus true attitudes about defensive driving differ markedly.
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