Depth interviews are for detailed exploration into consumers minds. These unstructured interviews can explore purchase, usage and ownership experience. Interviews are structured to cover client topics but unstructured enough to allow subjects to take the discussion where they deem most important. Through this process they reveal deeper meanings about things like why they buy, how they feel about using a product, how they want others to perceive them because they use it, what core values connect with the brand and why.
A deep understanding of purchase motivations and the most salient product features are common outputs from these studies; in-turn these outputs serve as inputs for market-wide survey measurements. In this way, depth interviews initiate the process for break through products.
New interview techniques, based on brain research studies, enable interviewers to tap the subconscious mind (where most purchase decisions are now known to occur). These techniques often include some form of observation.