Motivation research is a term used to refer to a selection of qualitative research

methods that were designed to probe consumers' minds in order to discover the

subconscious or latent reasons and goals underlying everyday consumption and

purchasing behaviors. Motivation research was derived from an application of

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic personality theories and became the premier

consumer research method in the 1950s. It has had a lasting influence on the areas

of advertising and consumer research, as well as advertising practice. Dr. Ernest

Dichter, a trained psychoanalyst, was the first and foremost practitioner of

motivation research.

Motivation Research Tools and Techniques

In contemporary marketing research, there are a number of qualitative research

techniques used to delve into customers' unconscious hidden motivations. These

techniques draw their lineage directly from motivation research. They include

projective tests and tasks, metaphor analysis, storytelling, word-association tasks,

sentence-completion tasks, picture generation, and also photo sorts

(see Exploratory Research; Focus Groups and Depth Interviews; Observation

Methods; Personal Observation; Projective Techniques). Marketing researchers

such as Gerald Zaltman and Clotaire Rapaille are new practitioners of the craft of
motivation research who pick up, develop, and make contemporary the approach

initially popularized by Ernest Dichter.

3.1 Thematic Apperception Test and Other Projectives

The thematic apperception test was developed by Henry A. Murray and Christiana

D. Morgan at Harvard University during the 1930s to explore some of the

motivating forces underlying personality. It is a picture interpretation technique

that uses a standard series of 30 pictures about which the research subject is asked

to tell a dramatic story. The pictures themselves are open-ended yet provocative,

showing, for example, a young boy contemplating a violin that sits on a table

before him.

For a marketing research example, consider the hypothetical research we might

conduct for a new cold medication. In this research, there would be an image of a

middle-aged woman in a bathrobe looking into a mirror and a caption underneath it

saying “She looked into the mirror that morning and realized that she had a cold.”

When we show this picture to women, what might we hear? As researchers we

would probably discover that middle-aged women consider their lives to be fast

paced, full of obligations, and socially active. The discovery of a cold abruptly

disturbs the pace of their lives. An advertisement that could result from this

projective research might show an attractive, busy, middle-aged woman walking

stops. She opens her purse, takes out the cold medication, takes it, smiles, and then

her life speeds up to its previous rapid pace. By providing such an image in

advertising, the marketer is to symbolize that they understand the lived experience

and social world of the consumer. This image-based positioning builds strong

emotional ties between the brand and the consumer.

3.2 Metaphor Analysis

Metaphor analysis is a method based upon providing visual images to consumers,

or having them collect their own images, and then using these images for

projective tasks in which they compare and contrast products, services, or brands

to the various images, and the images to one another. The analytic goal of

metaphor analysis is to generate guiding analogies providing a deep sense of

understanding of how consumers relate to a particular product, category, or brand.

Gerald Zaltman, Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, has

popularized this method in recent years. His approach, which he terms ZMET, or

the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique, is based upon many of the same

fundamentals as classic motivation research. Zaltman 1996 offers the following

founding principles for his metaphor test: the nonverbal and unconscious nature of

most social communications, the image-based or imaginary nature of most human

or bodily nature of cognition and thought, the linkage of reason, emotion, and

experience and the assumption that deep structures of human motivation can be

accessed through projective-style research (see Projective Techniques). The

relation of the body, emotions, and hidden unconscious motivations to the

projective task of marketing research relates this work directly to motivation

research.

In the ZMET test, consumers are either asked to collect a number of images that

represent their thoughts and feelings about a product, service, or brand, or they are

provided with these images in various forms. The forms can be clippings from a

magazine or specially designed graphics and photographs that they select from the

computer screen. Research participants are given the focus of the research a week

or more in advance of the actual interview. They are encouraged to ruminate and

think deeply about the topic of the assignment and, if relevant, about their selection

of photographs and images. The research question must be carefully considered in

order to focus the response of the consumers. Considerations may include their

opinions of a particular company or brand, their experiences of a purchase setting

or a buying process, their use of a service or product, or how they feel about a

certain concept. Participants are also directed not to choose photographs that

literally represent a product or service. For example, if the research topic is mobile
phones, the research participant would be asked not to select any actual

photographs or graphics of mobile phones. Forcing the research participant to

choose photos that indirectly relate to digital cameras activates an analogical style

of reasoning that, it is assumed, can help reveal latent feelings, thoughts, and

motivations (Zaltman, 1996).

The interview is approximately two hours in length and consists of guided

questions regarding the images chosen by the consumers to answer the focused

research question. As the interview progresses, participants are asked for their

opinions regarding other senses that might express their feelings and thoughts. The

researcher's main task is to attempt to elicit as many rich metaphors from the

participant's experiences and memories as possible. The idea, according to Zaltman

(1996, p. 15), is to allow “deep, latent ideas to emerge as well as for the expression

of the wide range of relevant ideas.” Increasingly, the ZMET and other metaphor-

based techniques have incorporated advanced mapping and diagram-drawing

techniques to analyze and present the findings of their research, as well as digital

graphical design and even creative animations with voice-overs. The ZMET

technique has been very successfully adopted and used by the top corporations in

the world, from Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble, to Walt Disney, Mercedes-

Benz, Bank of America, Microsoft, and Chevron.

In the method of guided storytelling, consumers tell real-life stories about the

meanings or uses of products under investigation. Although this technique is

related to depth interviews, it is considered to be a distinct form of research. Often,

the storytelling method asks research participants to imagine and relate stories

relating to their own product or service usage. Another application of the

storytelling methodology requires subjects to imagine a story involving another

person. So, for example, people who have a fear of tall buildings would be asked to

imagine and then tell a story about why some people are afraid of tall buildings. In

this way, the storytelling process ameliorates people's own anxiety,

embarrassment, and social-censoring mechanisms. Doing so, people will be less

likely to censor their own apprehension about heights and to offer an accurate

portrayal (see Exploratory Research).

As a form of motivation research, the storytelling method seeks to plumb the

depths of consumer motivations. For example, Kimberly Clarke used a storytelling

method in order to study current perceptions about diapers (Lieber, 1997). They

found that using this research method, the parents actually considered that diapers

were a type of clothing related to a particular stage in the child's development. If

their child wore diapers for too long, the result was that the parents became
distressed and embarrassed because they viewed it as a failure. They felt that they

had not toilet trained their children properly and that this lack of success was

obvious from the children wearing the wrong apparel for that particular stage in

their life. Using the data from this storytelling study, Kimberly-Clark introduced its

new Huggies Pull-ups training pants. These training pants introduced a highly

successful new category into the US diaper industry.

3.4 Word-Association and Sentence-Completion Tasks

In word-association tests, research participants are presented with words one at a

time, and then asked to respond with the first word that comes to mind, for

example, “What is the first word that you think of when I mention the word or

category coffee?” In a sentence-completion task, respondents are asked to

complete a sentence upon hearing the opening phrase. For example “People who

drink Starbucks are …” or “A Starbucks latte reminds me of….” These related

methods can be very useful in determining consumers' associations with existing

brand names, eliciting related choice sets, as well as determining associations with

new brand names that are being considered and that are currently under

development.

An entire web site has been devoted to creating word clouds based on people's

reactions to brand names. It is called Brand Tags and is available

brand name, there is a very wide assortment of responses. For example, the word

cloud associated with Starbucks includes not only strong, burnt, green, and trendy

but corporate, mermaid, addictive, ubiquitous, and overpriced.

3.5 Picture Generation

Marketing researchers can also use visual images to study consumers' perceptions

of various brands. They can use an analysis of consumers' guided drawings or

doodles to help understand consumer perceptions, and use that understanding to

brainstorm new strategies for advertising. Consider some hypothetical research on

coffee. Research participants were asked to draw pictures of the typical drinker of

Maxwell House coffee. These drawings might elicit drawings of old-fashioned,

chubby females wearing frilly aprons. When asked to draw pictures of Starbucks

drinkers, the drawings might show a series of slim, cool, “with it” women wearing

high heels and miniskirts. For a company like Maxwell House, these findings

might provide important input about the dire need to reposition its product to seem

more in tune with the times.

3.6 Photo Sorts

In photo sorting tasks, respondents receive stacks of photos depicting various

events and are asked to select the pictures from the set that best portrays or
captures some particular element that the researcher is interested in investigating.

In a photo-sort study that was conducted by an advertising agency for Playtex, the

manufacturer of bras, research participants received a stack of photos that

portrayed many different types of women wearing many different types of

clothing. First, the research participants were asked to choose pictures that

represented the typical user of Playtex bras. They chose overweight, old-fashioned,

big-breasted women (O'Shaughnessy, 1995, p. 437). These women, who were

Playtex users themselves, were then asked by the researcher to select the pictures

from those that best captured their own self images. Although many of the

respondents may have been overweight, full-breasted, and old-fashioned in

appearance, they selected photos that showed physically fit, well-dressed, and

independent-looking women. The advertising agency then advised Playtex to stop

stressing the comfort of its bras in its advertising campaigns and, instead, to design

a new campaign that showed thinner and sexier big-bosomed women under the

slogan “the fit that makes the fashion.”