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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 purpose of this paper is to examine consumers’ perception of food safety for vegetables at traditional urban market outlets in a developing country context and test whether curiosity-motivated information acquisition and personal control over choice of stimuli influence consumer involvement, resulting in more differentiated mental models.

The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) in standard and modified form was used to develop consumers’ mental models for food safety.

The cognitive content and structure of aggregated consumers’ mental models were identified and mapped. The maps included negative and positive meanings, indicating a need to tackle the hygiene problems prevailing in most traditional markets. ZMET generated a more differentiated map when people were empowered with a camera to collect stimuli.

Using ZMET to understand food safety perceptions avoids consumers being led in their responses, views and feelings about food safety.

Policy, regulatory frameworks and marketing actions by value chain actors in the fresh vegetable subsector should give priority to tackling the hygiene problem prevalent in most traditional markets in developing countries.

This paper provides novel needs-driven theoretical and practical insights into the actual meaning representation of food safety, which actually drives consumer thoughts and behaviour. Making use of a camera in the collection of self-provided images for the ZMET interview led to higher levels of involvement and further differentiation of mental models.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of eco-designed packaging on consumers’ responses. It defines the concept of eco-designed packaging, and proposes a consumer-led taxonomy of its cues. Attitudinal and behavioral, positive and negative responses triggered by the perception of these signals are analyzed.

Results were reached through qualitative methods. A phenomenological approach consisting of eight in-depth interviews has been followed by a series of ten Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) interviews. The synergy of these two methods is underlined.

The complexity of packaging ecological cues perception is outlined by expressing the differences in the nature of these cues. A taxonomy is then presented; ecological cues fall into three categories: structural cues, graphical/iconic cues and informational cues. Finally, consumers’ responses to the perception of eco-designed packaging are presented and perceived benefits and perceived sacrifices are revealed.

Packaging is of great importance in consumers’ purchase decision process, especially in situations of temporal pressure and hyperchoice environments. Since consumers take more and more into account the ethicality of the brand in their consumption, the understanding of their attitudes and behaviors toward eco-designed packaging may enable brands to build a competitive advantage.

The literature review reveals that there is no similar research available. The use of two qualitative methods enables to understand consumers’ deep-seated motivations, attitudes and behaviors toward eco-designed packaging. The results of this study can also be used by advertisers, for social marketing campaigns, to encourage consumers to reduce the global ecological footprint of packaging.

The purpose of this paper is to extend research on metaphors of consumption to a Chinese cultural setting, specifically examining consumer thoughts related the Chinese concept of renao (hot and noisy).

The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) was used – a photo elicitation approach and semi‐structured interviews that surfaced metaphors. Field observation and participative techniques were combined with the 14 interviews, in Taiwan, through a grounded theory approach that classified results in categories using the software XSight.

Five main categories of related concepts consistently arose: food, inexpensive, crowd, marketing communication and servicescape. Respondents closely tied renao with consumption behavior. All five categories resulted in rich descriptions that these consumers, and possibly a wider group, associate with successful retail locations.

This in‐depth approach was limited to 14 respondents and two researchers living in Taiwan. Thus, both the sample and the sample frame are restricted. Although the concept of renao is common in all Chinese cultural settings, its exact interpretation differs in different locations, sub‐cultures and marketing segments.

Consumers expressing their values though consumption is a marketing topic both studied and used in the West. The convergence of consumers' perception of self and consumption is no less important, but certainly different, for consumers in a Chinese cultural setting. Local values heavily influence Chinese consumption in Taiwan, such as the central concept of renao. These local values are rarely discussed in Western literature. Retailers can benefit by incorporating at least some of these metaphors, while marketing researchers can gain an expanded definition of consumer self‐image and values.

This study adopted the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) because of its sophisticated imaging techniques in eliciting mental models. Scholars across disciplines have been exploring paradigms beyond positivism due to the question about the adequacy of quantitative measures to capture complete accounts and to deal with vital problems. The marketing literature also advocates the need of a new methodology to examine consumers’ underlying thought and behavior that might help alleviate the industry's inability to translate research findings directly into practices. This study elicited tourists’ mental models, which were depicted on an integrated consensus map with three metaphoric themes. Marketers might translate these metaphoric themes directly into practices. The results of this study strongly support the use of qualitative methodology, more specifically the ZMET, as a means for obtaining the underlying tourists’ behavior that often remain far beyond the reach of traditional research methods.

Successful marketing communication campaigns require a thorough assessment of the public's current perceptions and attitudes toward the topic of the campaign. Such insights are most likely attained if a range of research methods are employed. However, in the area of pro-environmental campaigns, there has been an over-reliance on quantitative surveys. To illustrate the benefits of complementary, qualitative approaches, this paper reports a qualitative investigation of perceptions of climate change among young South Koreans.

The study employed a variant of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), a hybrid protocol which combines photo elicitation with metaphor analysis of subsequent in-depth individual interviews. Unlike survey research, ZMET uncovers the emotional, interpretive and sensory mental structures which, along with factual knowledge, make up the public mindset about climate change.

The analysis revealed a multifaceted mental model of climate change, whereby factual, interpretive and emotional knowledge is organized around themes of loss, human greed, affective distress and iconic representations of tragic endings. The causal dynamics of climate change are construed along a continuum of psychological distance, with antecedents placed in proximity and effects assigned to distant temporal, geographical and psychological spaces.

Four message strategies for climate change mitigation campaigns are identified based on the findings.

The study makes a methodological argument for supplementing survey research with image-based qualitative investigations in the formative stages of pro-environmental campaigns. More specifically, the article demonstrates the applicability of ZMET to social marketing communication. Apart from the methodological implications, this appears to be the first in-depth qualitative investigation of public perceptions of climate change in East Asia, a populous and fast developing region which has become a major contributor to the world’s carbon emissions, and an important player in the global effort toward mitigation.

Consumer experiences of healthcare services are challenging for researchers to study because of the complex, intangible and temporal nature of service provision. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel longitudinal three-phase research protocol, which combines iterative interviewing with visual techniques. This approach is utilised to study consumer service experiences, dimensions of consumer value and consumer value co-creation in a transformational service setting: complementary and alternative medicine healthcare.

This research employed a three-phase qualitative longitudinal research protocol, which incorporated: an initial in-depth interview, implementation of the visual elicitation technique Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique and a final interview to gain participant feedback on the analysis of data collected in the first two phases.

Four key benefits derived from using the three-phase protocol are reported: confirmation and elaboration of consumer value themes, emergence of underreported themes, evidence of transformation and refinement of themes, ensuring dependability of data and subsequent theory development.

The study provides evidence that a longitudinal multi-method approach using in-depth interviews and visual methods is a powerful tool that service researchers should consider, particularly for transformative service research settings with sensitive contexts, such as healthcare, and when studying difficult to articulate concepts, such as consumer value and value co-creation.

To define the similarities and differences in perceptions that mobile consumers in culturally distinct markets hold towards the mobile internet.

Using the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET), mental maps between consumers from Indonesia and Japan were developed and compared.

Results showed clear structural similarities between aggregate maps, while differences were found in experiential factors such as technical infrastructure or the underlying business model. The main barriers to widespread consumer adoption of the mobile internet were not found in cognitive structures unique to individual markets, but appeared instead to be caused by inefficiencies within the wireless ecosystem.

These results identified factors from a number of pre‐existing theories relevant to the mobile platform, suggesting the need to develop a new, more inclusive theory of mobile consumer behavior. ZMET was also shown to be an effective comparative analysis tool applicable to cross‐cultural research.

Marketers can establish sustainable competitive advantage by effectively addressing the many negative aspects consumers raised about the MobileNet. Additionally, these results suggest that the mobile platform can serve as the foundation for truly co‐creative marketing initiatives.

This is the first paper to explore the cognitive structure and content of consumer perceptions of the mobile internet. This study was also the first to apply ZMET as a comparative tool, as well as the first to extend ZMET to include composite weights of construct dyads.

This research aims to uncover consumers' deeply hidden thoughts and feelings about store scent and its effects on shopping experiences.

Following a qualitative approach, this research uses Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET). All the steps of the ZMET have been performed, and important constructs and contents have been explored.

Ultimately, a hierarchical value map was presented. Accordingly, the naturalness and intensity of the scent played a prominent part in its effectiveness. The pleasantness and complexity of the scent, the malodor, congruity and incongruity of the scent, as well as nostalgia, were seen as the predominant originator constructs that resulted in approach or avoidance reactions.

These findings have practical implications for managers seeking to design a store atmospherics making way for consumers to engage with the store and the brand. The cultural milieu in which the study was performed could be seen as a possible limitation of the study. This cultural angle should also be taken into consideration while the findings were considered.

Using ZMET as an innovative research method makes the study significant. By doing so, the metaphors of consumption are extended to the sensory marketing field to provide a more comprehensive understanding on the effects of store scent. Moreover, the study contributes to the existing literature of smell marketing.

The paper focuses on how student entrepreneurs learn from the process of applying for low-threshold seed capital grants of about €2500

An in-depth inductive study was conducted on the seed capital grant initiative TrønderEnergi–Bidraget (TEB). The research design was based on the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) to capture the interviewees' perceptions about TEB. From the interviews, 596 codes were identified and grouped into 54 categories. The results are illustrated in a consensus map.

TEB is an enabler of student venture creation processes through both the money awarded and activities fostering learning and development. Learning by doing is visible through two processes: 1) repeated writing of applications and 2) “forced” reflective thinking through the steps in the application process. The iterativeness of these processes due to repeated applications to the low threshold initiative is important for learning.

The authors recommend that university managers and policymakers offer seed funding to student entrepreneurs to ensure that the offering is a low threshold. A low threshold is decisive for generating a positive learning outcome from the application process. The seed funding initiatives should require students to put time and energy into all the integrated processes to make value out of the iterativeness of the processes.

This paper extends the discussion on the additionality of receiving grants by focusing on the process of applying for a grant. This research contributes to the student entrepreneurship literature by suggesting that the design of the application process and forced reflections are important for learning, as well as specifying the antecedents for student motivation for continued entrepreneurial activity in the application process.