The Importance of Being Ernest:
A tribute to Dichter
Barbara B. SternRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
For much of his life (1907-1992), Dichter was acknowledged to be the 'father' of motivation research (MR), a name derived from the study of human motives (Williams, 1957). Dichter (1964) built on Freudian psychoanalysis to unearth hidden motivations, defining MR as a research approach that tapped into the consumer's subconscious to discover feelings about products (Wiebe, 1958; Williams, 1957). Dichter was hailed as a pioneering change agent (Coolsen, 1947; Savitt, 1980) who introduced 'the use of projective techniques in consumer research'...