Question 1

Why is psychological/motivation research important?

Accepted Answer

Psychological/motivation research is important because it provides the roadmap to where consumers live: how to position your brand so it resonates in their hearts and minds, how to design advertising that proves that you understand what’s important to them, how to deliver marketing that leads them to your offerings, and how to design your offerings so that consumers will be convinced it meets their needs better than any alternative. Neuromarketing and biometrics may help you understand how consumers will feel when they experience your product, but motivation research will help you ensure that they seek out that experience. Consider that your offering may be “objectively better” than its competitors on attributes such as price, performance, aesthetics, durability, and so on; will consumers take the time to learn about those attributes if you fail to connect with them emotionally? Suppose they do take the time to learn and agree that your product is “objectively better;” will that guarantee they will choose it over an “objectively worse” product that makes them feel “warm inside?” Even the best quantitative model to predict purchase decisions will have an error term associated with it, but understanding consumer psychology and motivation can reduce the size of that term. Why do people do anything? Because they realize they need or want something that they don’t already have, and the tension from not having it pushes them to try to get it. What they look for, how they look for it, and how they evaluate it relative to alternatives will vary according to their conscious thoughts and unconscious influences such as their cultural background, social reference groups, previous life experiences, self-image and self-esteem, exposure to advertising and marketing, and so on. Psychological and motivation research helps you to understand these various drivers, discover what is common across consumers in your target market, and identify how to connect your brand, advertising, marketing, and products to these drivers and consumers. Insights suppliers who are experts in this field may subscribe to different theories of motivation and take different approaches to research, and it is worth your time to understand how they can help you and which are most compatible with your way of thinking.

Question 2

What are the 2 most influential theories of consumer motivation?

Accepted Answer

There are many theories of consumer motivation, but the 2 most influential theories are, arguably, Ernest Dichter’s “consumption motives” and Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” In the early 20th century, Dichter, who was born and studied in Vienna, was widely credited with shifting the focus of market research away from documenting “what happened” toward understanding “why it happened” from the perspective of consumer motivation. Maslow’s theory, introduced in the 1943 article “A Theory of Human Motivation,” is not specifically a consumer theory, but has been widely applied as such. Brief sketches of each follow, with acknowledgment that these do not do the theories full justice and that other theories have also been influential. The Hierarchy of Needs suggests that humans seek to fulfill basic needs, such as food and shelter, before they are motivated to pursue fulfillment of higher level needs, like safety, social interaction, art appreciation, or spiritual needs. The four lower level needs – physical, safety, love and social, and esteem needs - are considered “deficiency needs” which, if left unfulfilled, result in anxiety and tension or worse. The upper four – cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualizing, and transcendence needs – are considered “growth needs.” The implication for marketing is that brands need to understand how they perform for consumers at each level and, presumably, understand the prominence of consumers at each stage in their markets at a given point in time. Dichter, the “father of motivational research,” made many significant contributions to market research and the study of motivation. He proposed twelve “consumption motives” that explain why consumers buy things and applied these to brand campaigns he recommended. The twelve are power-masculinity-virility, security, eroticism, moral purity-cleanliness, social acceptance, individuality, status, femininity, reward, mastery over environment, dis-alienation, and magic-mystery. Many of his brand recommendations are still in use today, and his theory is influential because it was pioneering. Today, however, we might think that his typology of motivations is dated or is tellingly a product of his background as a psychologist from Vienna who studied Freud, and that it lacks relevance in our world. This observation may lead you to question the value of theories of motivation, as well it should. However, the answer to that question is that the value of motivation theories is as heuristic devices that help to structure research and analysis, not ends in themselves. Each supplier of psychological or motivation research might apply their own theory or heuristic or perhaps they apply several until they find one that fits the current research effort. These theories can be very helpful when trying to understand consumer motivation and how to turn it into marketing. One application to avoid, however, is use of them during actual data collection when interviewing or observing consumers. You don’t want theoretical typologies to guide the interviews; you want the interviews to help you theorize types that fit your marketing needs.

Question 3

What are the 3 main methods used in psychological/motivation research?

Accepted Answer

The 3 main methods used in psychological/motivation research are observation, focus groups, and in-depth interviews because these can minimize bias when conducted properly, enabling the consumer’s deepest thoughts, feelings, and experiences to emerge. Large-scale quantitative research is sometimes conducted, but mainly as a follow up or complement because its structure and the biases inherent to its design limit the degree to which consumers can access and express their motivations. Of the 3 main methods, the in-depth interview is arguably the most effective because it places the fewest obstacles between consumers and their inner worlds. The main objective of the researcher is to enable the consumer to talk as much as they want and as openly as they can about thoughts, feelings, and experiences that may give insight to what motivates them within a given product category or other marketing-related domain. The main role of the researcher is to steer the consumer’s monologue in a deeper direction as the interview progresses and back toward the main subject if the monologue veers astray. The second role of the researcher is to observe the monologue and look for clues about motivation in what is spoken, in what is indicated by body language and expression, and in what is avoided. To keep the session on track as well as to accurately analyze it later, the researcher needs to tease apart a variety of drivers of motivation, such as the influence of culture, social reference groups, and personal experiences. A good researcher will maximize the amount of content that comes from the consumer’s point of view while minimizing any biases that could be introduced via some types of direct questions, implied judgments, opinions or external knowledge, or indifference. The researcher has a similar non-interference role in focus groups, but the group setting introduces barriers to understanding the individual in-depth. An individual perspective may be inhibited by factors such as pressure to conform to social norms, the presence of a dominant group member, or the lack of time that can be accorded to any individual because it has to be shared across the group. However, a focus group has advantages over in-depth interviews because the group dynamic can elicit emotional reactions that may not be stimulated by an individual monologue. The researcher will look for occasions when the group gets more excited or where emotions otherwise shift because these bits of conversation will provide clues to motivation. In both types of research, a set of techniques has evolved that enables the researcher to step back while the consumer engages in activities that will provoke associations, memories, and emotions. There are many kinds of techniques, and they generally involve providing a stimulus and having the consumer talk about what comes to mind. The consumer may be given a set of photographs and asked to select ones that relate to brands, products, or other concepts, then discuss why they made those selections. In another image-based technique, they may be asked to make drawings and discuss them. Other techniques involve language, such as word association or sentence completion exercises. Storytelling is another kind of technique, and consumers typically tell a story about when they used the product or experienced the brand, or they may be asked to make up a story about someone else. Each of these techniques encourages the consumer to reflect on their inner worlds while maintaining relevance to the main research topic. The third main type of research is observation, such as ethnography or in-store observation. To the extent that the consumer can tune out the fact that they are being observed, it is the least biasing and least intrusive of the three methods. It has the potential to provide the most realistic insight into motivation because the activity occurs in the natural course of the consumer’s life. However, it can be difficult or expensive to set up, and it can be difficult to derive the correct meaning from the observation. Of any technique, this may require the most objectivity from the researcher as well extensive experience with the methodology in order to accurately interpret the data.

Question 4

Why is empathy important in psychological/motivation research?

Accepted Answer

Empathy is important in psychological/motivational research because the consumer needs to feel comfortable opening up to the researcher, and the researcher needs to shed all pre-conceived ideas and judgments when working with the consumer. You cannot learn a consumer’s deeper motivations if they are inhibited, and you cannot find out anything more than the most superficial drivers if the researcher introduces their own biases. Empathy, objectivity, and open-mindedness with a broad perspective are critical to motivation research. If a consumer feels as comfortable talking to the researcher as they feel talking to themselves, they will have a more successful journey through the various thoughts, experiences, and feelings that eventually will lead to the identification of motivational drivers. Questions are necessary, but interrogations are off-putting. Probing for the explanation behind a feeling or idea is part of the process, but asking in a way that sounds like a value judgment is antithetical to it. Objectivity is part of building empathy. A structured set of questions always has some kind of perspective behind it, so structured questioning will introduce alien thinking to the research. Harboring a theory of motivation and types of motivation that becomes apparent during the interaction also taints the research. In motivation research, objectivity means that you inhabit the consumer’s world, taking only pictures and leaving only footprints, so to speak. Open-mindedness and a broad perspective are also extremely important lest the research produce data but no findings. The researcher may not be able to prevent themselves from forming hypothesis while listening to the consumer, but they have to remember that only the associations made by the consumer and brought forth organically are meaningful. The researcher has to resist the kind of thinking that closes down avenues of exploration simply because they are not in the researcher’s street guide. A broad perspective is important because the consumer may be able to provide all the necessary data, but perhaps not all the necessary interpretations. That leaves it up to the researcher to figure out the most likely meaning during the post-interview analysis. Because meaning is unique to the consumer and because that which is unspoken can be as important as that which is, the researcher must have a perspective and knowledge base broad enough to generate new hypotheses. Whereas it might be tempting to have an industry or category expert lead the research, consider that such subject matter knowledge might unwittingly direct the findings to preconceived and banal conclusions. The prerequisite is that the researcher have extensive experience conducting successful psychological/motivation research, not that they are an industry know-it-all.

Question 5

When is quantitative research appropriate in motivation research?

Accepted Answer

Carefully designed quantitative research is appropriate as a follow up to complement psychological or motivation research, but it is not a good standalone effort if you need to uncover deep motivations. You can certainly design a set of questions that ask people why they do things and provide sets of closed-ended answers, but the results will reflect what you think the motivations are or could be, resulting in a very superficial understanding of your target market. There is significant push back from some motivation researchers against the use of quantitative research because it cannot get to the deep psychological needs that people have. However, you may not be able to get internal stakeholders to fund marketing activities without the numbers to “prove” it will pay off, and motivation research typically does not deal in large, representative samples. Hence, you may need to conduct quantitative research anyway. Most importantly, position the quantitative research as a follow-up to the observational research, focus groups, or in-depth interviews. The initial qualitative motivation research will provide the hypotheses to test as well as “deeper” concepts around which to design your questions and response choices. As much as possible, try to respect the guidelines for conducting the qualitative work in the quantitative version – make the tone non-threatening and conversational rather than interrogative, and try to build a rapport. Instead of asking “why would you buy” or “what would motivate you to buy,” design some psychographic statements that capture the concepts you wish to explore. Plan to factor analyze or otherwise create groupings so that each statement does not have to do as much work. For example, if you think you have identified a type of motivation that is driven by a cluster of attitudes, ask the individual attitudes instead of the aggregate motivation. The concepts will be easier for the respondent to comprehend, and the questions will be objective rather than leading. There are other aspects to consider and there are other approaches that can be taken. Find a psychological/motivation researcher that is compatible with your needs, and they can help you to design the quant research.

Top Firms for Psychological and Motivation Research with Consumers

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Mindstate Group

Mindstate Group

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Pinnacle Research Group, LLC

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Clearworks

Fletcher Knight, Inc.

Fletcher Knight, Inc.