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This paper outlines a variety of the research on student attrition and recognises some of the sensitivities that may be involved for some students in dealing with dropping out of university. This paper claims that because of these sensibilities, some student’s responses to direct questions about the reasons for attrition may be biased by social desirability. The purpose of this paper is to get beyond social desirability bias to examine a fuller range of reasons for student retention and attrition.

In an exploratory investigation, this research study uses a projective technique which helps to circumvent the conscious defences of respondents. The projective technique is based on the “thematic apperception test” and uses a “bubble drawing” to elicit emotional and more socially undesirable responses.

All first-year students appear to consider leaving university, and emotional considerations involving loneliness and homesickness are much more prominent than most quantitative studies acknowledge. For example, in this research, social concerns are twice as prominent as financial concerns, whereas in past survey research, financial concerns have been identified as most prominent.

To retain students, universities need to provide new students with real care and support, especially in their first few weeks at university. To study retention comprehensively, researchers need to go beyond the confines of positivist research.

This is the first study that uses a projective technique to investigate student retention and attrition. By going beyond a merely positivist approach to research, a fuller, deeper and more complete understanding of the wide extent and profound nature of the emotional issues involved in student attrition and retention is gained.

In this volume, researchers have brought their expertise to bear on the ambivalence enacted and expressed by adult children and their parents towards each other. As Lüscher and Pillemer note in their seminal article (1998), using ambivalence as an organizing concept for the study of intergenerational relationships allows researchers to explore the inherent contradiction of roles and obligations. For example, at what point does a child become an adult child? Is this a judgment that both parent and child make? What happens when parent and child disagree? Even raising the question misses the point: One can never unidimensionally be an “adult child.” In the subtle and dynamic consciousness within which each of us dwells, we are always an adult and a child to ourselves and to our parents, as they were to theirs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the benefits of tasting as a projective technique (PT) in explicating consumers' thoughts and feelings towards food and beverage products.

In total, ten focus groups were conducted with 35 consumers, 14 wine producers, and 13 mediators. The mediator category included those involved in marketing, wholesaling, retailing, and judging wine. Participants in each focus group were given the same four wines to taste. Initially they were invited to discuss their views on wine quality. The participants were then presented with the wines and asked to discuss their responses to them, particularly their perceptions of the quality of the wines.

The primary findings related to: the changes in apparent certainty levels amongst professionals and high‐involvement informants; exposure of real and contradictory preferences; role of cognitive, affective, and sensory responses to wine; and interpretation of the language of tasting.

Tasting as a PT has the potential to generate additional and insightful data that can increase our appreciation of the complexities involved in consumption experiences. In particular, it can reveal the uncertainty that can affect consumers' product evaluations and explicate the multiple evaluation pathways that can be used by consumers of food and beverage products.

The paper is of value in showing that the ability of PTs to yield both stated and actual preferences provides insight into the salient external factors that impact on consumption decisions and gives an indication of where marketers could most effectively focus their product development and promotional attention.

In entrepreneurship research, self‐reporting using questionnaires is often used as a replacement for the projective test, the thematic apperception test (TAT). Posits that this study is to examine whether an objective test, Cezarec‐Marks personal scheme (CMPS) can be used as a replacement measure for TAT. States that the subjects in the investigation are people in higher education; two measures of the same individuals, over a period of seven months, were carried out, the average age at the first test was 21.3 years, and an analysis of correlation shows no correlation (r(t1) = 0.0556, n = 89, r(t)2 = 0.0733, n = 71) between need for achievement with TAT and need for achievement with CMPS. Confirms the findings of the study that the hypothesis of TAT cannot be replaced by CMPS.

The purpose of this paper is to gain deeper insight into the meanings that structure and impel consumer choice by overlaying findings from a metaphor elicitation study onto the results of a traditional means‐end laddering study.

First, laddering interviews were conducted to elicit the reasons that structure the college choice decision of students. A second study using metaphor elicitation techniques surfaced additional meanings that constitute and connect students' thoughts and feelings about their experiences at the college. Together, the two modes of interviewing yield deeper insight into personal relevance and consumer choice than offered by either alone.

Combining two modes of interviewing provides views at various levels of detail. Whereas laddering interviews use direct questioning to identify consumers' choice criteria, projective techniques rely on indirect questioning to surface the enduring and ephemeral feelings that charge consumer beliefs. Panning and zooming from the general structural overview provided by means‐end research to the nuance and detail surfaced by metaphor elicitation provides uncommon insight into the drivers of consumer choice.

The time, effort, skill, and expense required for data collection, analysis, and interpretation are non‐trivial and may limit adoption of the two study approach.

The superimposition of metaphoric meanings onto consumer decision maps provides tremendous added value to managers aiming to enhance the creativity, relevance, and effectiveness of their marketing initiatives.

Melding two interview methods adds depth to means‐end research and lends structure to projective associations. The deeper insights into personal relevance and choice benefit academics and practitioners alike.

The purpose of this study is to compare two different types of measures of social desirability bias (SDB), a short form of the Marlowe–Crowne measure, a popular direct measure, and an example of a projective technique where half of the respondents record the views of their “best friends”.

The data were collected using an online survey of members of a consumer panel. The context chosen to test the SDB measures was that of attitudes toward counterfeit products and xenocentrism in Colombia. Counterfeit proneness, attitude toward counterfeit products and consumer xenocentrism were selected as variables likely to be affected by SDB. Vertical and horizontal collectivism were included as variables likely to influence the first group of variables while not being themselves subject to SDB.

The projective technique consistently identified higher levels of SDB effects, as hypothesized. Marked differences emerged in the apparent strength of the relationships between the operational constructs depending upon which measure of SDB was used. At times, whether any such relationship might exist depended on the SDB measure used. Contrary to some prior work, no systematic gender effects were identified using either approach.

The first study to provide evidence of the comparative effects of different types of measures of SDB in research into ethical issues. One of the few to demonstrate how apparent relationships between variables can be created by SDB.

We discuss the use of creative qualitative techniques for research studies focusing on young participants and encourage the development of what we term a “child‐centric” approach. We hope that by sharing our experiences we can help move forward the discussion of child‐centric approaches and methods, providing a useful starting point for researchers considering conducting qualitative research with children, and food for thought for those experienced at researching the lives of young consumers.

We begin our paper with a general overview of approaches to childhood as a social category, discuss methodological approaches to research with children and review the literature that informed our methodological approach. In the second part of the paper we focus on an empirical investigation, outlining a methodology with which we sought to embrace children's active participation. Our qualitative approach incorporates the following: quasi‐ethnographic methods; interviews; projective techniques and photography.

It is suggested that by shifting our research focus from a top‐down perspective into one that embraces childhood as a culture in its own right, we can greet children within their own language, using terminology they understand, and ultimately providing the context for a more fruitful and exciting data collection process. Our research design was effective in providing children with a voice with which to relate their experiences, and in this way we saw ourselves as facilitators, letting children tell us their own story in their own words.

We argue that it is only by recognising and taking on board some of the recommendations that have emerged from the debate concerning research with children that consumer researchers will discover a fuller appreciation of the participants we seek to understand. Lessons from this approach can also be fruitfully used to enhance the experiences of research involving participants other than children who should also benefit from more participant‐centred research designs.

This paper aims to present concepts and tools for developing place branding that protects places from overbranding, redundant promotion and excessive tourism.

The concept of a product-based place brand that reflects local ways of life and local identities was introduced. A combination of projective, typological and narrative methods was applied. Three focus groups composed of future place managers were held in three countries (N = 27) to develop place brand vocabularies and typologies of verbal characteristics of abstract places as products for internal users (residents).

In most cases, the place brand vocabularies were consistent and compatible within each abstract type and were unique (mutually exclusive) between the types. The vocabularies contained both detailed and more generalized elements. For each place, short formulations of the general concept were found. Each brand vocabulary reflected the institutional, socio-psychological, cultural, historical and geographic differences of the countries involved in the research.

A conceptual and methodological framework for creating place brand vocabularies is offered, and it describes the close relationship between multiple internal brand attributes and their concise expressions appropriate for communication and high differentiation among brand attributes that facilitate the recognition of branded places by target and non-target audiences. The framework is applicable for designing verbal attributes of place brands for specific places to avoid overbranding effects.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the holistic perception of the customer vis‐a‐vis the creation of an ideal store by using the projective technique of collage. In particular, it discusses the role of the factor of atmosphere which a distributor must privilege to satisfy the expectations of current customer.

To this end, a qualitative exploratory survey based on the technique of collage has been carried out with a sample of 30 individuals. The information were collected through the drawings and the technique of “complete the following sentence”. The collages were analyzed using a holistic approach.

The results show that the new customer refers to all the stimuli of the environment of purchase in order to satisfy his utility, hedonic and even social needs. The companies, and in particular the distributors, must direct the atmosphere of their store towards the vectors of attraction, gratification and distraction.

The projective technique of collage made it possible to go further than a declaratory matter collected by questions about the concept of the environmental factors. Indeed, in spite of the limited number of the individuals relied upon for the study, the images that were stuck on paper were enriching and made it possible to explain what evokes for the consumer the concept of “ideal store”; his feelings or his hidden emotions.

From a managerial point of view, the noted results can give way to a significant number of actions for the distributors. Indeed, in order to ensure the perennial aspect of their business, the persons in charge should follow this practice by considering the atmosphere as a sum of factors which should be managed in a coherent and harmonious way and not in an intuitive way; thus constituting sources of creation of value for the consumer. In other words, the distributors must implement the factors necessary to generate the comfort of purchase as well as the pleasure of consumption.

This paper is distinguished compared to the majority of the researches undertaken on this subject. It proposes an indirect qualitative study (projective study) making it possible to certify the passage of the consumer from an atomized vision towards a holistic vision including informing the distributors on the atmospheric components most adapted to the new requirements of the current consumer.

Self‐reporting questionnaires as well as projective tests are frequently used in entrepreneurship and management research that is concerned with the need for achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine whether an objective test such as the Cesarec‐Markes Personal Scheme (CMPS) and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) have any predictive validity on the entrepreneurial activity of starting a new business. The study had a longitudinal design. Psychological measurement of need for achievement was conducted before the entrepreneurial decision was made. The period between the psychological measurement and the collection of the data for the longitudinal study was 11 years. In summary, the result of the study does not support the hypothesis that the TAT has any predictive validity. On the other hand, the result of the study does support the hypothesis that the objective test CMPS has predictive validity.