Projective Techniques

Also known as: Projective Tests, Indirect Techniques, Projective Methods

Indirect qualitative methods that bypass the respondent's conscious defenses to reveal deeper motivations and attitudes.

Projective Techniques are qualitative research methods adapted from clinical psychology that use indirect and ambiguous stimuli to elicit responses revealing deeper motivations, attitudes, and beliefs than what the participant would express in direct questions.

Main techniques in market research: Word association ('What words do you associate with this brand?'), Personalization ('If this brand were a person, what would they be like?'), Projective collage (creating an image with cutouts representing the brand), Sentence completion ('People who buy this brand are...'), and Extended metaphor (Zaltman's ZMET).

They are especially useful for researching brands with high symbolic or emotional charge, and for exploring attitudes on sensitive topics where direct response may be contaminated by social desirability.

Atlantia includes projective techniques as part of its qualitative brand equity and innovation studies.