IntroductionAsk any audience what Bulls, Bears, Sharks,Tigers, Eagles, Broncos and Rhinos have incommon, and the response “rugby leagueteams” will be almost instantaneous. Similarly,Canaries, Magpies, Foxes, Owls, Rams andWolves will be quickly identified as the imagesof soccer teams.Associating animals with brands or prod-ucts extends far beyond the sports marketingarena. The delightful puppy used to promoteAndrex , the chimps who drink PG Tips andthe tiger associated with petrol sales havebecome part of our popular culture.The reason for this proliferation of associa-tions between brands and animals or otherimages and symbols is simply an attempt touse secondary features to distinguish betweenalmost identical brands and products.This paper explores the use of projectivetechniques for examining the transfer ofcharacteristics from two sets of cue cards to asample of food brands.In recent years there has been an explosionin the number of product categories and thenumber of similar brands available, which hasrequired marketers and advertisers to lookmore closely at how customers relate to theirbrands. In the FMCG industry there is theadded problem of the retailer labels: manylarge manufacturers of branded goods havelost clear brand leadership in a number ofimportant markets to private label products,which is particularly problematic as price andbrand name are often the only distinguishingfeatures. This has prompted a shift away fromfocusing on consumers wants and needs infavour of brand equity and maximising invest-ment in existing products with line extensions(Piirto Heath, 1996). Max Blackston, ofOgilvy and Mather, says: “There’s little thatdistinguishes between brands these days inconsumers’ eyes. It’s often very, very small,subtle things that you have to leverage” (PiirtoHeath, 1990).The proliferation of new data sourcesentering the market, including scanner dataand single-source databases, is making ittempting for marketers to seek their answersthrough consumer response to marketingeffort and to track changes in market share,brand loyalty and brand switching. However,these are objective, behavioural measures thatprovide little evidence of the emotional andtextural aspects of consumer response.22Qualitative Market Research: An International JournalVolume 2 · Number 1 · 1999 · pp. 22–30© MCB University Press · ISSN 1352-2752Projecting the rightimage: using projectivetechniques to measurebrand imageMichael Hussey andNicola DuncombeThe authorsMichael Hussey is Lecturer in Marketing Research atAston Business School, Aston, Birmingham, UK.Nicola Duncombe is Research Associate at Aston Business School, Aston, Birmingham, UK.KeywordsBrand image, Brands, Consumer behaviour, Food,Marketing researchAbstractResearch has shown that consumers very often do not useexplicit, concrete, rational factors to evaluate products,and thus their motivation to purchase is not always easy toarticulate. Traditionally, marketers have used projectivetechniques in qualitative research groups to overcome thisproblem. This method is not infallible as each moderatorbrings his or her own style to discussions and subjectivejudgement to the interpretation of results, and it is practi-cally impossible to replicate identically over time. The workpresented in this paper describes the development of a setof implicit characteristics for two animation sets to whichrespondents will respond similarly and with consistency,through which we can identify the brand image held andconsequently the motivations behind brand choice.Although standard quantitative techniquescan be used to extract the many explicit,concrete, rational factors, that consumers useto evaluate products not all “buying decisionsare exclusively or even predominantlythoughtful, rational decisions that are easilyarticulated” (Raffel, 1996). Consumer prod-ucts have a significance that goes beyond theirutilitarian, functional and commercial value(Erickson, 1996). This accounts for therenaissance in the use of qualitative tech-niques over recent years; many qualitativemethods provide insight into the “whys” ofconsumer behaviour, explaining the relation-ship between a consumer and a particularbranded product, retailer, or service provider(Day, 1989).Of particular interest are those methodsthat resemble as closely as possible theFreudian technique of Free Association,which are collectively called projective tech-niques (Atkinson et al., 1990).Projective techniques involve presentingsubjects with ambiguous stimuli to which theymay respond as they wish. Theoretically,because the stimuli are ambiguous and do notrequire a specific response, the individual isable to project his or her personality on to thestimuli. In qualitative research, projectivetechniques allow respondents to “project theirperceptions and feelings onto some otherperson or object – or in some other way areallowed to depersonalise their responses, andthus they feel freer to express their thoughtsand feelings” (Day, 1989), thus breakingseveral barriers to communication: lack ofawareness of repressed motivations; inabilityto express themselves; unwillingness to dis-close certain feelings; irrationality, and sub-jects trying to say the right things to please theinterviewer. Nevertheless, projective tech-niques are not infallible, as each moderatorbrings his or her own style to discussions andsubjective judgement to the interpretation ofresults. Despite some specialists employingcontent analysis and special analytical tech-niques to bring some measure of objectivity tothe analytical process, it remains subjective.Also, standard focus group limitations apply;they require personal interviews with highly-trained interviewers, which is incredibly timeconsuming and expensive, and is impossibleto replicate identically over time. Therefore,some method of using projective techniquesin a more objective manner is required.Recent research has suggested that one solution may be the identification or creationof a set of stimuli that produce consistentresponse across individuals.The implicit modelHeylen et al. (1995) have developed an“implicit model of consumer behaviour”which attempts to provide a systematic, objec-tive, scientific base for data collection, dataanalysis and data interpretation, and to pro-vide the link between qualitative and quantita-tive research. The formulation of the implicitmodel has made it possible to develop stan-dardised research methods that