Comments on: the Zaltman method

By: PS

PS — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:48:26 +0000

Grant,
This is terribly late to add to your post on Zaltman, but my own experience with the ZMET was with the shameless marketing of it by people who couldn't explain it, though they assured me we needed it. The notion of "trained facilitators" and trained analysts all sounds nice, and is exactly what I think I'd want to do with such material. However, as an experienced, eclectic, market researcher looking for a new way to gain insight, I was repeatedly stone-walled by folks who were representing the ZMET process for Dr. Zaltman and yet could not provide any sense of the structure of the analytic process. I didn't need to know exactly how to do what they said would be done with the metaphores, I just wanted to know generally what approach they would use to doing analysis; what were the internal reliability and validation steps perhaps? Five years later, I'm still waiting for an answer. The technique has intuitive appeal. The implementation, as marketed to me seemed beyond shoddy.

By: Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 12:31:51 +0000

Understanding the blending of the universal and the particular is always the challenge. Archetypal stories infuse our experience with timelessness and the churn of the NOW (lived somewhat differently by each individual) contextualize those experiences uniquely. Ignoring either misses something crucial about the world in which consumers live. I've always felt the ZMET was heavy-handed on the former and light on the latter. Your post clarifies that feeling. On the other hand, at least he's not Rapaille!

By: Graham Hill

Graham Hill — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 04:44:12 +0000

Grant

Tom's points are very salient. Neuroscientists like Damasion have shown conclusively that 95% of our decisioning is non-conscious. We couldn't cope with life if it were any other way.

But we also know that other individuals, peer groups and society's mores also heavily influence individual decisioning.

What we really need is a way to understand what drives individual decisioning within this richer context of the real world. And in a unified approach rather than an eclictix mix of techniques somehow melded together.

Any ideas?

Graham Hill

By: steve

steve — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:22:24 +0000

I don't know anything about ZMET, but Grant's logic about non-universals in marketing is compelling.

I am sure there are human universals--I own an anthropology book with that title. Their relevance to marketing is questionable, however. Maybe there's a small number of universals which can be combined in a very large number of ways, or something, but the degree and importance of cultural (and situational) variety seems overwhelming.

By: Carol Gee

Carol Gee — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:02:39 +0000

Grant, a good post. First, it takes courage to take on a person's idea, about whom you had originally thought differently.
Some thoughts: Overgeneralization is perhaps, his cognitive error. Universal archetypes certainly infuse our unconscious perceptions, but so does culture and socialization both at the micro and macro level. It is always handy for consultants to have THE ANSWER, but that answer is rarely applicable across all clients' challenges.
That is why cookie-cutter or "recipe" therapeutic interventions never worked for my counseling clients. Each was an individual. And market segments have that kind of "individuation," I think.

By: Tom Asacker

Tom Asacker — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:12:28 +0000

"When Dr. Zaltman sits down with composite images and claims to see what they mean, I get nervous."

That would make me nervous as well, Grant. But that's not what I remember happening when I experienced Dr. Zaltman's ZMET firsthand.

Instead, as a participant, I was allowed - with the aid of a trained facilitator - to extract my own meaning from the collage. It was an intriguing way to bring my subconscious thoughts to a conscious level.

Since most marketplace decisions are made at an intuitive level and the data we use to reach those decisions resides below the level of conscious awareness, ZMET appears to be a sound way to discover that data. What the marketer chooses to DO with that data is a different matter entirely.

By: GrahamHill

GrahamHill — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:25:59 +0000

Grant

Not an easy one to resolve.

It strikes me that all research methods, including ZMET, ethnography, particularly focus groups, etc, are all gross simplifications of reality. Whose model is the best? Nobody's. They all need melding together to make sense of the world at the individual, group and societal levels. Culture cuts across all three.

Dr Zaltman may have you worried. But all market researchers have me worried. That's why I listen to a variety of them, then make up my own mind, then run marketing experiments to see what really works.

As you say, the proof of the marketing pudding is in the eating.

Graham Hill