Psychoanalysis, Metaphors, and Marketing: Going beyond the surface

I have always been interested in attitudes that people have about certain phenomena that they encounter everyday - and how these attitudes are formed, how these attitudes influence and shape their own behaviors - and those of others.

This is something that I picked up from the Harvard Business School's blogs - the use of psychoanalysis (and/or similar techniques) to get to the bottom of one's relationships with and perceptions of brands in general.  Unlike in ethnology where a researcher may be relegated as an observer and the 'subjects' and their interactions and their expressions observed from a distance, this technique developed by Jerry Zaltman, uses interviews that are founded on the psychoanalytic disciplines of psychology/psychiatry.  (Think Rorschach inkblots or word-associations or draw-a-tree/person test.)

 

Interesting approach.

Here's a link to the video.