2. Projective techniques

Such techniques are based on respondent's performance of certain tasks given by marketer. The purpose is to have consumers (respondents) express their unconscious beliefs through projective stimuli; to express associations towards various symbols, images, signs.

Cooper (1996) suggested that projective techniques can be successfully employed to: - indicate emotional and rational reactions;

- provide verbal and non-verbal communication;

- give permission to express novel ideas;

- encourage fantasy, idiosyncrasy and originality;

- reduce social constraints and censorship;

- encourage group members to share and "open up".

Projective market research techniques can take following forms, presented below.

Collages – used to understand lifestyles and brand perceptions, respondents are asked to assemble a collage using images and symbols from selected sets of stimuli or from magazines and newspapers of their choice.

Picture completion – certain pictures can be designed to express and visualize issue under study and respondents have to make associations and / or attribute words to given pictures.

Analogies and metaphors are used when a larger range of projection is needed, with more complexity and depth of ideas and thoughts on a given brand, product, service, organization. The respondents are asked to freely express their association and analogies towards object being studied; or they can be asked to select from a set of stimuli (e.g. photos) those that fit examined subject.

Psycho-drawing is a technique that allows study participants to express a wide range of perceptions by making drawings of what they perceive brand is (or product, service).

Personalization consists in asking respondents to treat brand or product as if it is a person and start making associations or finding images of this person. This technique is especially recommended in order to understand what kind of personality consumers assign to a brand / product / service.

3. In-depth interviews

These techniques of marketing research put an accent on verbal communication and they are efficient especially when trying to discover underlying attitudes and motivations towards a product or a specific market / consumption situation.

Individual in-depth interviews are performed on a person-to-person environment and interviewer can obtain very specific and precise answers. Such interviews are common in B2B practices of market research, for example when a company conducts a research about a product among their existing corporate customers.

Interviews can be conducted by phone or via internet-based media, from a centralized location: this can greatly reduce costs associated with market research and results are pretty much as accurate as face-to-face ones. The only disadvantage would be lack of non-verbal, visual communication.

Focus groups are basically discussions conducted by a researcher with a group of respondents who are considered to be representative for target market.

Such meetings are usually held in an informal setting and are moderated by researcher. Videotaping sessions is common these days, and it can add more sources of analysis at a later time.

Focus groups are perhaps ideal technique, if available in terms of costs and time, to test new ideas and concepts towards brands and products; to study customers' response to creative media such as ads and packaging design or to detect trends in consumers' attribute and perception. One of important advantages of focus groups is presence of several respondents in same time, providing a certain synergy. Disadvantages refer mainly to costs involved and scarcity of good professionals to conduct interviews and discussions.

To conclude, we have to keep in mind just how important non-survey data collection techniques are in today's market research. Not only they provide more depth of analysis but they can be performed in significantly less time than surveys and they're more suitable to be employed during exploratory phases of international marketing research.

You might say this sounds paranoid, and you would not be too wrong. The purpose of above statements, with all their intended exaggeration, is to ring a bell.

Another issue is that of audience and purpose of writings discussed here. Since they are published mostly on sites claiming to offer marketing resources for professionals, we might assume this is target audience. Still, it is very doubtful that true professionals would bother to read something entitled "Increase your sales – 10 easy tips", unless some morbid curiosity or a weird sense of humor drives them on. Why? Because they know there is nothing new under sun, those "tips" are just rewritten old principles, same content with a different cover. Taking a better look at content of "incriminating" works, one can recognize principles taught in school, now extremely summarized and simplified, written in a very accessible language level, and in most of cases presented as authors' very piece of mind. Well, if professionals are not audience, then who is? Students? They are stuck with their bulky books trying to become next Philip Kotler... Maybe business owners? No... they must have either hired someone or they got busy running business themselves, unaware of Z number of advices waiting to be read.

It means we return to first assumption, that number – entitled articles address to marketing professionals. And, hey, almost forgot to mention that author is, in most cases, a "marketing guru" (I am terrified by this guru thing!) From this point, real worries begin: since when level of professionalism lowered so much? Are we losing our creative thinking? Can't we come up with something new anymore? Do we need those cheap works to have us promoted?

... Finally, are we getting dumb?