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This article describes several lessons learned during my career. Some describe ways of approaching intellectual issues and others express values and attitudes underlying these approaches. Although the lessons have evolved in a largely academic context, they seem equally appropriate in the world of practice. The personal rules of thumb and ideas inherent in these lessons are typically developed and practiced implicitly. However, readers should find these explicit statements relevant in different ways. Some lessons might be candidates for adoption outright. Others might be constructive points of departure for evolving a related lesson better suited to one's own working style. All lessons, whether or not they are agreeable or appropriate, can serve as thought starters by challenging readers to surface their own implicit career lessons for comparison.

This paper aims to shed light on the demand side of sustainability, that is, on its perceived meaning. The goal is to understand how people think of sustainability, the concepts they evoke when they talk of sustainability and the images and symbols they use to explain these concepts.

This study uses a mixed method. First, ten individuals are interviewed using the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET), a protocol developed by Gerald Zaltman in the early 1990s. The concepts and categories emerging from the ZMET have been analyzed, integrated and classified to identify key dimensions.

Ten concepts related to sustainability are the most recurring in the ZMET: problems and solutions, individual behavior, environment and ecosystem, technologies and innovations, social fairness, food and nutrition, mobility, education and mindfulness, sustainable development and utopia/ideal world.

Ten interviews is a small number to provide a comprehensive analysis of all the meanings of sustainability. To obtain a more complete picture, the number of interviews may need to be increased to 15–20.

The fact that the two concepts appearing with the highest frequency in the ZMETs are “problems and solutions” and “individual behavior” signals that though people understand that there are many problems to be solved in the world as it is now, even the single individual can contribute with his/her behavior.

Sustainability is an issue that involves society as a whole; hence, its improvement requires concerted political action coordinated at the national and local levels. The key point of this action is education of people, to make them aware of what sustainability really is.

Although the literature on sustainability is rather abundant, extant literature has mainly focused on the supply/managerial side such as sustainable and responsible companies, corporate social responsibility and also sustainable tourism. This paper sheds some light on the more neglected side of the demand perspective.

This paper aims to explore how the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) can be adopted in services marketing to provide deeper customer experience insights.

This paper explores how ZMET interviews, which use images selected by the participant to facilitate discussion, can be used by researchers. This paper draws upon a study of 24 student experiences at a UK university.

Adopting this qualitative method for services marketing can counter depth deficit when compared to other qualitative approaches, because it is participant led. However, the method requires competent interview skills and time for the interview and analysis. We find that ZMET has not been widely adopted in academia because of its commercial licenced use. The paper illustrates how to use the ZMET process step-by-step.

Findings are limited to student experiences. Further research is necessary to understand how researchers could use ZMET in other areas of services marketing.

This paper provides guidance to researchers on how to use ZMET as a methodological tool. ZMET facilitates a deeper understanding of service experiences through using participant chosen images and thus enabling researchers to uncover subconscious hidden perceptions that other methods may not find.

ZMET has been used commercially to gain market insights but has had limited application in service research. Existing studies fail to provide details of how ZMET can be used to access the consumer subconscious. This paper makes a methodological contribution by providing step-by-step guidance on how to apply ZMET to services marketing.

The inquiry center concept fosters the competencies needed to ask key questions and provide useful answers about a firm's markets and its products or services in a continuous process of learning and renewal.

Purpose – To explore the nature of metaphorical thinking in marketing and consumer research, with particular emphasis on consumers’ metaphor-manufacturing proclivities.

Methods/approach – The chapter concentrates on one of the most compelling and powerful metaphors of the 20th century, the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912. It uses introspective methods to interrogate consumers’ figurative interpretations of the iconic catastrophe.

Findings – Four categories of consumer metaphor-making are identified: negative, positive, reflexive and visual.

Research implications – The profusion of Titanic tropes suggests that researchers should resist unearthing ‘deep’ metaphors and focus instead on ‘wide’ metaphors, those that spread across the surface of society and culture.

Practical implications – ZMET, the widely used metaphorical elicitation procedure, warrants a complement called TMET. This Titanic Metaphor Elaboration Tendency is better attuned to contemporary branding thinking than its more familiar predecessor.

An attempt to profile the problem‐prone consumer shows that some are more apt than others to perceive problems, and this propensity relates positively to experience of related problems. Lack of economic, health, social and intellectual resources was found to be a less positive influence. However, frequency of marketplace participation was discovered, by means of a mailed questionnaire, to be the strongest factor in the probability of perceiving consumer problems. Most consumers have few bad buying experiences, but it is vital to handle these seriously and to identify the problem‐prone. Although disadvantaged consumers may seem less exposed to problems, this may be due to a difference in aspirations and subjective perceptions, which should be further studied.

Retail sector companies often overlook the positive contribution psychology could make to their success. At a time when more decisions than ever are made in‐store, any media must provide a pathway to the purchase that is subconsciously triggered and therefore it would be a wise move to spend more on below‐the‐line and through‐the‐line strategies. A key challenge is to create an environment where the shopper perceives a one‐to‐one relationship with the store; to optimise the shopper’s time; to make it appear as if the ranging, and categorisation of products has been personalised just for them; and by attention to this, retailers will deliver an experience the shopper will want to repeat. So what is the smartest technique to pinpoint what they really want? By using a combination of brain imaging and eye scanning technologies to delve into the mind of the shopper, the desired insight could be within reach.