In a recent paperIn our previous article, we talked about the important role played by context in the relevance and richness of our memories; we will now draw some methodological conclusions for marketing research.
Let's look for a moment at the assisted advertising memory collected either in a omnibusor in a Uses & Attitudes : the 1er fashion, by multiplying contexts, blurs the lines, while the 2nd has already strongly revived the communication context - unless you skip the advertising diagnosis at the start of the survey.
But it is clearly in qualitative approaches that mastering the contextual framework is the most crucial: firstly, to access this context, you need to activate the "good" memory: episodic, not semantic.
Let's take a simple example: if you want to understand how viewers organise their evenings in front of the TV screen and decide which programmes they are going to watch, you need to launch the theme during a focus group.
1era Possibly, you launch the debate: "How do you choose the film, series, programme, etc. that you are going to watch?" By doing this, you are addressing ... semantic memory, the participants will "rationalise their choices - and you'll be missing the point.
2nde As an option, you can initiate episodic memory by asking your participants to tell you what happens from the moment the members of the family get home in the evening... and then you'll discover that it's the first one home who turns on the television, that we switch to this or that channel for the news... and that if what follows is good, we stay there without asking too many questions.
In other families, it is the father who will have noted down the week's sports programmes and will lose interest in the other days. "so as not to monopolise choices".etc.
We generally enter episodic memory through details that are often minor... and always extremely personal; then it's like a burst: everything is reconstructed, the memory becomes clear and rich.
Semantic memory is collective, generally built on repetition: for example, everyone has learned that "two and two make four and that "Carglass repairs, Carglass replaces", It doesn't matter whether it's on a primary school bench or in front of the TV; episodic memory is necessarily individual and it is these intimate fragments that the moderator will endeavour to bring to light.
Of course, the best way of accessing episodic memory is in a one-to-one interview: in a group, discussion always leads to a degree of rationalisation (= delving into semantic memory and constructing an abstract universe), whereas alone with a psychologist who listens sympathetically, the interviewee will give free rein to his or her ramblings.
Today, new approaches - particularly those based on both virtual and augmented reality - can enhance marketing research, notably by improving access to contextual memory. However, we must be careful not to play sorcerer's apprentice by introducing false memories where we were simply seeking to facilitate access to... real memories!
