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People who buy Coach handbags __.
(Will he or she reply with “are cool,” “are affluent,” or “are pretentious,” for example?)
KFC’s grilled chicken is __.
Or the person might be asked to finish a story that presents a certain scenario. Word associations are also
used to discern people’s underlying attitudes toward goods and services. Using a word-association
technique, a market researcher asks a person to say or write the first word that comes to his or her mind
in response to another word. If the initial word is “fast food,” what word does the person associate it with
or respond with? Is it “McDonald’s”? If many people reply that way, and you’re conducting research for
Burger King, that could indicate Burger King has a problem. However, if the research is being conducted
for Wendy’s, which recently began running an advertising campaign to the effect that Wendy’s offerings
are “better than fast food,” it could indicate that the campaign is working.
Completing cartoons is yet another type of projective technique. It’s similar to finishing a sentence or
story, only with the pictures. People are asked to look at a cartoon such as the one shown in Figure 10.8
"Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique". One of the characters in the picture will have
made a statement, and the person is asked to fill in the empty cartoon “bubble” with how they think the
second character will respond.
Figure 10.8 Example of a Cartoon-Completion Projective Technique