Page 129 - Marketing Management

106 PART 2 CAPTURING MARKETING INSIGHTS

Nevertheless, there is increasing interest in using qualitative methods. “Marketing Insight:
Getting into the Heads of Consumers” describes the pioneering ZMET approach. Some other
popular qualitative research approaches to get inside consumers’ minds and find out what they
think or feel about brands and products include: 21
1. Word associations—Ask subjects what words come to mind when they hear the brand’s name.
“What does the Timex name mean to you? Tell me what comes to mind when you think of
Timex watches.” The primary purpose of free-association tasks is to identify the range of pos-
sible brand associations in consumers’ minds.
2. Projective techniques—Give people an incomplete stimulus and ask them to complete it, or
give them an ambiguous stimulus and ask them to make sense of it. One approach is “bubble
exercises” in which empty bubbles, like those found in cartoons, appear in scenes of people
buying or using certain products or services. Subjects fill in the bubble, indicating what they
believe is happening or being said. Another technique is comparison tasks in which people
compare brands to people, countries, animals, activities, fabrics, occupations, cars, magazines,
vegetables, nationalities, or even other brands.
3. Visualization—Visualization requires people to create a collage from magazine photos or
drawings to depict their perceptions.

catalogs, family photo albums) to represent their thoughts and feelings
about the research topic. In a one-on-one interview, the study adminis-
trator uses advanced interview techniques to explore the images with
the participant and reveal hidden meanings. Finally, the participants use
Marketing InsightInsight
Marketin g a computer program to create a collage with these images that commu-
nicates their subconscious thoughts and feelings about the topic. The
results often profoundly influence marketing actions, as the following
three examples illustrate:
Getting into the Heads • In a ZMET study about pantyhose for marketers at DuPont, some
respondents’ pictures showed fence posts encased in plastic wrap
of Consumers or steel bands strangling trees, suggesting that pantyhose are tight
and inconvenient. But another picture showed tall flowers in a
Harvard Business School marketing professor Gerald Zaltman, with vase, suggesting that the product made a woman feel thin, tall, and
some of his research colleagues, has developed an in-depth methodol- sexy. The “love-hate” relationship in these and other pictures sug-
ogy to uncover what consumers truly think and feel about products, gested a more complicated product relationship than the DuPont
services, brands, and other things. The basic assumption behind the marketers had assumed.
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is that most thoughts
• A ZMET study of Nestlé Crunch revealed that—besides the ob-
and feelings are unconscious and shaped by a set of “deep metaphors.” vious associations to a small indulgence in a busy world, a
Deep metaphors are basic frames or orientations that consumers have source of quick energy, and something that just tasted good—
toward the world around them. Largely unconscious and universal, they the candy bar was also seen as a powerful reminder of pleasant
recast everything someone thinks, hears, says, or does. According to childhood memories.
Zaltman, there are seven main metaphors:
• When Motorola conducted a ZMET study of a proposed new secu-
1. Balance: justice equilibrium and the interplay of elements; rity system, study participants selected images of what they felt
2. Transformation: changes in substance and circumstance; when they were secure. The Motorola researchers were struck by
how many images of dogs showed up, suggesting that it might be
3. Journey: the meeting of past, present, and future;
appropriate to position the product as a companion.
4. Container: inclusion, exclusion, and other boundaries;
5. Connection: the need to relate to oneself and others; Sources: Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman, Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep
Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers (Boston: Harvard Business
6. Resource: acquisitions and their consequences; and School Press, 2008); Daniel H. Pink, “Metaphor Marketing,” Fast Company,
March/April 1998, pp. 214–29; Brad Wieners, “Getting Inside—Way Inside—Your
7. Control: sense of mastery, vulnerability, and well-being
Customer’s Head,” Business 2.0, April 2003, pp. 54–55; Glenn L. Christensen and
Jerry C. Olson, “Mapping Consumers’ Mental Models with ZMET,” Psychology &
The ZMET technique works by first asking participants in advance
Marketing 19, no. 6 (June 2002), pp. 477–502; Emily Eakin, “Penetrating the Mind
to select a minimum of 12 images from their own sources (magazines, by Metaphor,” New York Times, February 23, 2002.