The Fallacy of Projective Techniques

Abstract

Advertising and market researchers continue to look to the behavioral sciences for techniques and procedures in the hope of explaining, accounting for. describing and classifying consumers and their buying behavior.

The use of projective techniques and their fallacies are discussed in this paper. A survey of the literature as well as experience in applying such techniques to consumers reveals their total incapacity and inapplicability to consumers.

It is concluded that advertising and marketing would be better advised to expend time and effort on analyzing buying and use behavior rather than “personality”, “trait”, “attitudinal”, “psychographic” or consumer life styles.