Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply introspection and related thought to the study and theoretical development of projective techniques and introspective-projective exercises. Design/methodology/approach – The method involves the application of introspective-projective thought exercises.Findings – The thought exercises reveal a symbiotic introspective-projection connection. This connection provides a unifying framework for both in terms of introspective-awareness research on metacognition, social metacognition and reflexivity, as well as in terms of related links to other consumer research domains. Originality/value – The paper is to the first to apply introspective-projective thought exercises. A second contribution is to develop an introspective-projective framework which can help reshape the application and design of projective techniques. A final contribution is to link projection to other relevant but hitherto ignored marketing research such as that dealing with less conscious-automatic versus more conscious-deliberative-enabled responses to stimuli.