Motivation Research

The term motivation was introduced in the 1930s by people in advertising who wanted to disclose the motives behind people's consumption choices. It originally referred to a set of unconscious factors that were thought to trigger people's behaviors, similar to the ring of a bell causing a dog to salivate in Pavlov's famous experiment. Thus, motivation research partially originated from the practical developments in marketing techniques and also from the ideological developments in the social sciences, which at the beginning of the twentieth century broke off with the model of economic man as described by classical economists. Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler in psychology, Georg [Page 1003]Simmel, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber in sociology had introduced the idea that people's behavior need not be rational and often cannot be.

The purpose of motivation research, especially strong in the marketing field during the 1950s, was to provide an understanding of the reasons that move people to behave in one way or another. Ernest Dichter and Louis Cheskin are known as the two key proponents. Dichter declared that rationalism was a kind of fetishism and that the desire to seem sensible to oneself and to others makes it difficult if not impossible to have direct access to pertinent information regarding motivation. Cheskin discovered that perceptions were influenced by factors formerly thought to have little importance.

Influenced by psychoanalysis and the success it had in being able to identify some of the deep-lying motives behind human behaviors, motivation researchers explored the possibilities of similarly explaining and understanding why consumers exhibited the behaviors that they did, behaviors that were often considered to be irrational. Such explanation and understanding, motivation researchers believed, would lead to better and more successful relations with consumers. Organizations that understood the deeper reasons behind why consumers felt and thought as they did and acted as they did would be able to further satisfy the needs or desires of their consumers, know better what and how to communicate to and with their consumers, and, when necessary, be more effective in controlling or modifying the behaviors of consumers. It seemed logical that as the reasons for them were explained, behaviors would be better understood, and better understanding would mean better success in interacting with and responding to consumers and their behaviors.

Helped by the work of the sociopsychologist Kurt Lewin, who analyzed and described the way obstacles operate in psychological behavior, Dichter and Cheskin proposed that advertising techniques should work on motivations by way of strengthening positive, deeper significations and minimizing any that act as an obstacle. As Sidney Levy (1999), who was one of the pioneers of motivation research in marketing, indicates, a number of scholars along with Dichter and Cheskin, as well as a number of business people, played a key role in the growth of motivation research and in its applications to advertising and other marketing efforts.

Given the reasoning that guided them, motivation researchers used techniques similar to those of psychoanalysts to get at deeper reasons underlying consumers' behaviors. Unlike a patient and his or her analyst, however, the motivation researcher and the consumer could not, practically, spend months and years in analysis; but the reasons behind consumption behaviors were not, hopefully, as deeply sub- or unconscious, hidden, and difficult to bring to consciousness. Thus, motivation researchers thought that methods such as in-depth interviews that lasted around one or two hours and focus groups that lasted somewhat longer and provided the opportunity for consumers to resonate with each other could get to sufficiently deep and informative reasons underlying consumer feelings and actions. Further used were “projective” techniques that also came out of psychoanalysis and that provided insights into reasons otherwise not easily expressed by consumers.

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