Abstract:

«Motivation Research» is a convenient shorthand term and it certainly has great sales, appeal, because every one wants to know why consumers do what they do. The use of this title holds out the hope or perhaps even the promise that this kind of problem will now be successfully tackled. But just therein lies its danger because as I suggest below this claim cannot yet be justified. The purpose of this paper is to try to put the matter into perspective, to sift out what is useful from what as rubbish, even if it glitters, and to try to indicate what these methods, which for the moment we will call «psychological», are likely to settle down into.