How it works

This post also answers the related questions and issues that we are often asked:

10 reasons for using an implicit reaction test (IRT).

10 reasons for using an implicit association test (IAT) in consumer research.

10 reasons not to solely rely on a traditional survey.

1. Traditional surveys don’t always have a very good way of measuring what is in consumers’ hearts.
2. Implicit surveys get right at consumers’ hearts. It’s exactly what the method is all about.
3. People often tell you what they think you want them to hear in a traditional survey.
4. In an implicit reaction time survey, people don’t explicitly tell you how they feel, they reveal it to you in their reaction times.
5. People often fail to make real discriminations in a traditional survey, hence all their product evaluations tend to converge around the average score.
6. In an implicit survey people cannot influence their scores (they can’t play the game to influence the results). Hence they make highly discriminating responses, and we often get very distinctive profiles of a brand/pack/advert and so on.
7. A traditional survey can often tell you which product or brand is most liked but not why.
8. An implicit survey not only reveals the best product, pack, brand, advert, and so on, it can tell you why because it will use 20 to 40 attributes and these are typically highly discriminating. The attributes provide you with a detailed profile of each brand/item.
9. In a traditional survey, people often can’t verbalise how they feel but they are required to answer anyway.
10. In an implicit survey, people don’t make evaluative judgements, they just try to press the correct keys and so allowing inferences to be made about how they feel – it captures their inner feelings.

Dr Eamon Fulcher