Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique

It was a fun class of doing  ZMET, and it was a new experience for me to understand consumer behavior. Compare the images that my teammate and I collected, I found the common sense as international students and differentiation in different cultural background. For example, both of us miss family and want to back to own county when we graduate from college. Both of us want to make more money in order to create our own family, but my teammate want to have two more kids, that I had never imaged when I graduate because I think kids should be considered when I am 28 years old. 

Apply these ideas in business world, I think ZMET is helpful when I need create advertisements or do marketing plans. My mother's cosmetic company can be a good example for me to use ZMET. Nowadays, her company is working on attracting new customers because the majority of customers are more than five years' regular customers. I will random choose two to five people to ask them find 8-12 images about "Cosmetics relate to your life." and follow each steps in ZMET. I will find their common senses about cosmetics, and those common senses can use to persuade new customers become her company members. On the other hand, there are some differences on individuals, and it should analyze specifically. From my mother's research, she thought the new customer age range is 20-35 years old. I will use one or two of those differences, which are connect well with the age range to find customers' needs. Finally, put the common senses and the differentiations together, create an advertisement or leaflet becomes easier and more efficient.

The last paragraph is my own discovery about ZMET. I know the main purpose of doing a ZMET interview is to discover how individuals and group react to the materialistic and metaphorical world on a practical and more philosophical, existential level. And the information can make marketing programs more meaningful and effective. I think my analysis about common sense and differentiation also useful in a marketing program.