Consumer Research with Projective Techniques: A Mixed Methods-Focused Review and Empirical Reanalysis

TL;DR

This paper reviews the use of projective techniques in consumer research, highlighting their historical development, methodological considerations, and providing an empirical reanalysis to improve rigor and guide future mixed methods studies.

Contribution

It offers an integrative review of projective methods in consumer research and presents an empirical reanalysis to enhance methodological rigor and future research directions.

Findings

Identified key reliability and validity issues in projective techniques.

Provided an empirical reanalysis of existing data to demonstrate methodological improvements.

Offered recommendations for integrating qualitative and quantitative methods in future studies.

Abstract

This article gives an integrative review of research using projective methods in the consumer research domain. We give a general historical overview of the use of projective methods, both in psychology and in consumer research applications, and discuss the reliability and validity aspects and measurement for projective techniques. We review the literature on projective techniques in the areas of marketing, hospitality & tourism, and consumer & food science, with a mixed methods research focus on the interplay of qualitative and quantitative techniques. We review the use of several quantitative techniques used for structuring and analyzing projective data and run an empirical reanalysis of previously gathered data. We give recommendations for improved rigor and for potential future work involving mixed methods in projective techniques.