Motivation Research

In the earliest days of qualitative market research in the USA, Ernest Dichter used this term to describe his pioneering application of psychoanalytic models and methods to marketing problems. Although an important figure in the establishment of qualitative market research, Dichter and his work became discredited through his apparently extreme and idiosyncratic interpretations, and the term is no longer used. Dichter's associate Bill Schlackman brought a version of motivation research to the UK in the 1960's, though his was a broader psychologically based rather than psychoanalytically based practice. The influence of this heritage remains visible in current practice.