Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique

Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique
One interesting approach to better understand how consumers view brands is the
Zaltman Metaphor
Elicitation Technique (ZMET).15 ZMET is based on a belief that consumers often have
subconscious motives for their purchasing behavior. “A lot goes on in our minds that
we’re not
aware of,” said former Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman. “Most of
what influences
what we say and do occurs below the level of awareness. That’s why we need new
techniques
to get at hidden knowledge—to get at what people don’t know they know.”
To access this hidden knowledge, he developed the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation
Technique.
As described in its U.S. patent, ZMET is “a technique for eliciting interconnected
constructs
that influence thought and behavior.” The word construct refers to “an abstraction
created
by the researcher to capture common ideas, concepts, or themes expressed by
customers.” For
example, the construct “ease of use” might capture the statements “simple to
operate,” “works
without hassle,” and “you don’t really have to do anything.”
ZMET stems from knowledge and research from varied fields such as “cognitive
neuroscience,
neurobiology, art critique, literary criticism, visual anthropology, visual sociology,
semiotics
. . . art therapy, and psycholinguistics.” The technique is based on the idea that “most
social
communication is nonverbal” and, as a result, approximately two-thirds of all stimuli
received
by the brain are visual. Using ZMET, Zaltman teases out consumers’ hidden thoughts
and feelings
about a particular topic, which often can be expressed best using metaphors.
Zaltman defines a metaphor as “a definition of one thing in terms of another, [which]
people
can use . . . to represent thoughts that are tacit, implicit, and unspoken.” ZMET
focuses on surface,
thematic, and deep metaphors. Some common deep metaphors include
“transformation,”
“container,” “journey,” “connection,” and “sacred and profane.”
A ZMET study starts with a group of participants who are asked in advance to think
about
the research topic at hand and collect a set of images from their own sources
(magazines, catalogs,
and family photo albums) that represent their thoughts and feelings about the
research topic.
The participants bring these images with them for a personal one-on-one two-hour
interview brain responds to marketing stimuli, including brands.16 For example,
some firms are applying
sophisticated techniques such as EEG (elector encephalograph) technology to
monitor brain
activity and better gauge consumer responses to marketing.
Neurological research has been applied many ways in marketing.17 It has been used
to measure
the type of emotional response consumers exhibit when presented with marketing
stimuli.
Neurological research has shown that people activate different regions of the brain
in assessing
the personality traits of people than they do when assessing brands.
One major research finding to emerge from neurological consumer research is that
many
purchase decisions appear to be characterized less by the logical weighing of
variables and more
“as a largely unconscious habitual process, as distinct from the rational, conscious,
informationprocessing
model of economists and traditional marketing textbooks.” Even basic decisions,
such as the purchase of gasoline, seem to be influenced by brain activity at the
subrational level.
Firms as varied as Intel, Paypal, Google, HP, Citi, and Microsoft have employed
neurological
marketing research studies. Frito-Lay hired neuromarketing firm NeuroFocus to study
how
consumers responded to their Cheetos cheese-flavored snack. Scanning the brains of
a carefully
chosen group of consumers revealed that their most powerful response was to the
product’s
messy outer coating. The research study’s insight led to an award-winning ad
campaign.18
By adding neurological techniques to their research arsenal, marketers are trying to
move
toward a more complete picture of what goes on inside consumers’ heads.19
Although it may be
able to offer different insights from conventional techniques, neurological research at
this point
is very costly, running as much as $100,000 or even more per project. Given the
complexity
of the human brain, however, many researchers caution that neurological research
should not
form the sole basis for marketing decisions. These research activities have not been
universally
accepted. The measurement devices to capture brain activity can be highly obtrusive,
such as
with skull caps studded with electrodes, creating artificial exposure conditions.
Others question
whether they offer unambiguous implications for marketing strategy. Brian Knutson,
a professor
of neuroscience and psychology at Stanford University, compares the use of EEG to
“standing
outside a baseball stadium and listening to the crowd to figure out what happened.”

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