If Freud had been a market researcher...

Editor’s note: Patricia Sauerbrey is supervisor, strategic resources group, at ZenithOptimedia, a San Francisco media services company.

Freud and market research? No, this is not another attempt to honor Freud’s 150th birthday anniversary by associating him with market research. Freudian thought is not only vivid in modern psychotherapy, but also in our everyday lives. And we surely don’t want to talk here about the Oedipus complex, the superego or the id.

In this article, I will discuss a methodology which seeks to account for the tremendous influence of the unconscious on the practice of market research.

Where is our unconscious while eating, shopping or cleaning - in other words, consuming? How does it affect our everyday actions and how can we as researchers benefit from it?

The emergence of qualitative market research certainly has helped dig deeper than multiple-choice questionnaires, but we must ask ourselves if the qualitative methodology we apply really looks behind the façade of the consumer. Some focus groups or so called in-depth interviews don’t go much deeper than an online survey. It’s unfortunately not enough to ask an open question to a couple of people hoping they will reveal their deepest motives for doing things.

Sometimes we forget that there are more characters in play than just our well-selected respondents. It’s ourselves, our clients and our well-selected interview or focus group attendees. And to make it just a little more complicated, the respondents are not the only ones with an unconscious.

Does that sound a little like group therapy? Well, actually it’s pretty close.

Morphological market and media research provides the theoretical background to reveal the role of the unconscious in all the different players within this system.

Morphology is the study of a form or structure and its metamorphoses. Applied to market and media research it provides a scientific approach to analyzing the people and artifacts of everyday culture. Originating in Europe, morphological market and media research is being increasingly applied to international markets in cross-cultural and foreign studies.

It turns some traditional research beliefs upside down and offers a methodology that avails itself of a toolbox appropriate to the object of study: everyday life.

The following provides an introduction to the morphological way of thinking and conducting research.

1. Serve the research interest and thenthe client

Most qualitative research methodologies aim to uncover the unconscious, but usually apply the unconscious only to the respondents. Again, we are in play, the client is in play, as are the “objects of study” (the new product concept, the ad mock-up, etc.) and the target group of consumers. Unfortunately, all of this is not organized in drawers we can just pull open.

Usually, the fairly general written briefing from our client asks us to identify the target group, figure out which hidden drivers should be considered for the marketing campaign or what psychological differences characterize the sub-targets. But we usually get the true sense of what the client is looking for in our first meeting.

An example: A marketing manager is looking for research that will support a higher budget to target a freshly discovered hip-and-trendy consumer group; the client’s internal researcher has to explain why the last online survey showed that the target is extremely extroverted and interested in cultural activities; and the new advertising V.P. would like to give the ad campaign his fingerprint.   We are right in the middle of all of this.

We want to make the clients happy, of course. Consciously - and unconsciously. And this is what we need to pay attention to. The unconscious part of our desire to please the client might influence us so much that we become blind to the “true” results. It might hold us back from finding and presenting provocative results that might feel threatening and uncomfortable to the client. However, these findings might reflect the reality better and provide the client with more actionable insights. Morphological research provides tools to overcome this dilemma.

2. Reveal the interviewee in yourself

When I was first introduced to market research I was asked to put myself aside, be unaffected by my prejudices and focus on what the respondent had to say. Of course, this is not completely wrong, but it misses a crucial point. One’s own opinions, prejudices and experiences are influencing factors that will impact the findings of a study. If we don’t make ourselves aware of these effects but try to ignore them as best we can, they will have uncontrollable impacts. We will be unable to distinguish between where we ourselves and where our interview or focus group attendees are involved.

To unmask your unconscious and understand your prejudices, sit down and take time to write out whatever comes to your mind regarding the study and the object of study (the new product, the new campaign, the target group, but also the client and what you feel you are supposed to reveal). Approach it from your personal angle: Describe your everyday life experiences with the object of study, how you first got to know it, who introduced you to it, what it changed, what you like and what you dislike. Imagine who might like it, who might dislike it and where you position yourself within this field. Ask yourself the same questions about the client. Don’t stop your thoughts if something comes to your mind that you can’t connect right away with the object of study. Allow for more questions coming up and don’t finish before you feel that you covered everything. Don’t think about structure and readability, let it flow and don’t set yourself any borders. Be as honest as you expect your respondents to be. Don’t stop when it becomes embarrassing - usually you touched something relevant when it starts getting uncomfortable. Squeeze yourself out like you are going to squeeze out your in-depth interview or focus group attendees. This might take 10 or more pages or a couple of hours - well-invested time that will facilitate the next steps tremendously.

What you have created is an experience journal, which every morphological market and media researcher writes upfront when conducting a study. You will be surprised what is going on in your head as soon as you take time to really experience your relationship to the object of study or the study itself. A helpful side effect of this procedure is that you yourself have to reveal apparently senseless, embarrassing and strange thoughts, which helps you support your interviewees or focus group attendees to report such thoughts in your upcoming sessions.

To write and to analyze an experience journal requires a lot of practice. A morphological market and media researcher trains herself in discussion with other morphologists. A couple of researchers write experience journals regarding the same topic and thereby understand which aspects they might have missed and which questions others might have when reading their thoughts. They get to know the similarities and different appearances of the same drivers or underlying principles.

3. The morphological in-depth interview/focus group

Make use of the treasures within the people in front of you. Make sure what you do could not be replaced by a questionnaire with open-ended questions. Dig deeper.

Start from scratch and facilitate free-associating. Ask the interviewee/group to describe what comes to their minds when thinking about the object of study. React flexibly, ask further and build meaning out of the pieces your subjects throw at you. Stay on track and ask yourself what they tell you about the object of study. Relate and ask further if you don’t see the connections.

Prepare yourself with a moderation/interview guide with your list of questions, so that you can jump to other questions if you feel the last one is answered. Apply the same method as you used for your experience journal. Remember what helped you dig deeper into yourself and try what works for each individual.

Most people are not used to free association. They expect to answer straight questions with short, rational answers. Encourage them to mention everything that comes to their mind, no matter how seemingly unrelated it might be. Give examples. This might sound fairly general, but it is the opposite: be as individual as possible. Work with provocation, repetition, pauses, associations, images and everyday life comparisons. Use a variety of communication techniques. Try, learn and practice to get a feeling for what works best for each person. Everybody is different: Some interviewees need more guidance, some like to take the lead; others might be stubborn and need you to facilitate their descriptions. See your interviewee as your partner in this research journey.

4. Describe, describe, describe

The interviews or focus groups are followed by written interview or focus group descriptions. The interview or focus group in all its appearances - words, gestures, facial expressions, atmosphere, interactions - gets described, because everything that happens in the context of the interview or focus group might show an aspect of the object of study. As in our everyday lives, often people’s gestures and facial expressions say more than words can. And sometimes we get a sense of things without even talking about them. We might express discomfort without saying anything, act bored while being very talkative or smile while feeling attacked. Just like our interviewees.

Our job is to reveal these contradictions, make sense out of them and understand the true meaning of what is going on. Ask yourself: What is so threatening about the topic that something needs to be hidden? When do you feel disconnections between words, body language and facial expressions? What makes them appear? What makes them disappear? Put in words what you discover. Describe misfits, observations and surprising discoveries; also describe your hypotheses about hidden meanings.

Ideally, five to eight interviewers are involved in a single study, each conducting independent interviews resulting in a total of about 30 to 50 interviews. The interview descriptions are then shared amongst all interviewers. Subsequently, batches of five to 10 interviews are summarized to explain recurring principles. The final presentation is a further summary of these summaries, making sure to provide the full picture and the overall understanding. While a single interview description is focused on the individual findings related to the personal experience of the interviewee, the final presentation reveals and illustrates the mechanisms or underlying principles in the sample’s mind and extrapolates to the target group’s mind.

5. Analyze this

Life is contradictory, as are our needs, thoughts and emotions. Most of our everyday life experiences represent a mixture of sensations. What we think and feel does not follow rules of structure and reason. Attraction and repulsion in all their nuances are usually facets of the whole picture.

An example: The consumption of a candy bar might relieve us from current stress, provide us with new energy and make us feel better, but on the other hand trigger worries about our figure and make us feel weak and childish. Not to mention the numerous sensations added to the picture by a specific brand and its image and positioning. If even the decision to eat a specific candy bar is not a straightforward one, think about the multidimensionality of media consumption, advertising impact and our mindset when we go shopping!

To not get lost in these manifold relationships with products, ads and media, morphological market and media research provides a framework that defines what exactly to look for. Morphological market and media research identifies six polar dimensions of the human mind, usually illustrated as corners of a hexagon. These dimensions represent movements or desires of the psyche involved in everything a person is dealing with, from toothpaste purchase to relationship management.

Without getting into too much detail, let me give an example of two competing dimensions within this framework: the dimension “acquirement” characterizes the mind’s tendency to try to keep something or to stick with the current. On the other hand, “alteration” describes the human desire to change, to do something different and alter the current status. Both dimensions are involved in everything we do and represent an underlying principle that expresses itself in multiple ways depending on what we are dealing with.

This has given you a quick glimpse of the theoretical background. Morphology not only defines these dimensions in detail but also provides an understanding of their relationships and the overall functioning of the human mind.

A morphological researcher acquaints herself with these principles through theoretical background studies as well as individual case studies to be able to flesh out the six dimensions of each specific study.

6. The mosaic and the full story

The end result of this process will be a vivid description of the psychological mechanisms taking place when people deal with the object of study. The morphological dimensions described above become animated through illustrative words, pictures and quotes from the interviews or focus groups. This is to provide the client with a feeling for its target group and the target group’s desires, mindset and relationship with the product, brand, ad, etc.

Don’t set limitations. Ask yourself what your audience or the reader needs to know to get the best sense of the target group. Create the mosaic, the whole picture out of the pieces you discovered. Reveal the psychological impact of the object of study. Ask yourself: What helped you understand? What made you grasp the relationships? What questions need to be answered? Which actionable implications can you provide?

Go back to the beginning and ask yourself what your client is looking for. Provide insights answering her questions, but answer also those questions you experienced while conducting the study. Make yourself aware of results that might attack the client’s perspective and call out the beneficial aspect of provocative results. Keep in mind what the client wants to do with the results. Provide her with a challenging and multidimensional story containing focused insights into the psychological complexities surrounding the object of study.

The rules of the unconscious

A methodology that claims to uncover the unconscious needs to follow the rules of the unconscious. Direct questions may provoke rationalizations and reasonable answers, while associations, metaphors and questions can reveal hidden drivers of actions like product or media consumption. Morphological market and media research provides the framework to unmask these hidden treasures in the consumer’s mind as well as the minds of the client and researcher.