Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers, by Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2008, 228 pp.)
Gerald Zaltman, a trained sociologist, has been a long-distinguished contributor to the understanding of consumer behavior and its relationship to marketing research (Deshpandé and Zaltman 1982; Moorman, Zaltman, and Deshpandé 1992; Zaltman 1997). What the Zaltmans have done in Marketing Metaphoria is create new labels and ways of categorizing motivations behind consumer behavior. The book is based on 15 years of careful thought. With the quickness of computers making it easy for people to react without necessarily thinking, this book is refreshing. The Zaltmans use the computer as a tool to enhance thinking about ideas that have already been generated. They do not view the computer as the driver of these ideas.
Getting into the heads of customers is a primary occupation of marketing managers, marketing researchers, and marketing academics. How researchers assess the thinking content and style of consumer decision making has changed dramatically over time—from identifying Freudian motivations, to calculating the importance weights of attributes, to assessing emotional factors, to analyzing branding concepts ad nauseam. Marketing Metaphoria clearly defines “marketing methodology” and leads it into the twenty-first century by asking consumers about the symbolic meaning of their possessions and surroundings in relation to their lives. The images are blended using computer technology, and consumers are then pushed and probed for the deeper meaning portrayed in the collages.
The introductory chapter speculates that there is “fear of change” in marketing. It may be more a fear of adopting techniques that are not simple and obvious. Furthermore, it is difficult to let people at the forefront (usually bright, recently educated minds) take control and implement the bold new ideas that are taught at the best universities. Perhaps the fear is not of change but rather of passing the torch to those with more recent knowledge, especially when that knowledge is not generated in conventional ways.
An industry observation is that many people who engage in marketing research have no training in marketing, psychology, or research methods. Some “research” companies still rely only on often-faulty focus groups for direction because they believe that the information obtained is always valid and reliable. Many people believe that they can conduct and understand the implications of a focus group. Off-the-cuff comments can be taken at face value and sometimes provide the sole basis for decisions. It would be beneficial to the industry as a whole if these “researchers,” as well as those who use such research, would read this book to understand that simple group discussions may only be a starting point for research, not an end point. An alternative title for Marketing Metaphoria might be Why Focus Groups Are Dead.
The introduction also mentions the seduction of differences and alludes to the notion that marketers may find more commonalities among their customers than what appears on the surface. This brings to mind the saying, “Consumers only want two things in life: to be happy and to feel important.” If a marketer can push these two buttons, they have got it made. However, different strokes push people’s “happy” and “important” buttons, depending on their prior experiences. Perhaps metaphors are the stories and paths to understanding what leads to happiness and importance.
Marketing Metaphoria outlines seven “giant” metaphors in people’s lives and devotes a chapter to explaining each metaphor and its subcomponents. These are (1) balance: justice equilibrium and the interplay of elements; (2) transformation: changes in substance and circumstance; (3) journey: the meeting of past, present, and future; (4) container: inclusion, exclusion, and other boundaries; (5) connection: the need to relate to oneself and others; (6) resource: acquisitions and their consequences; and (7) control: sense of mastery, vulnerability, and well-being. Each chapter contains examples of how these metaphors act as identifiers of people’s inner motivations to consume or not. There is no doubt that companies such as Procter & Gamble and L’Oreal understand and appreciate the power of these techniques and metaphor categorizations. However, smaller, less sophisticated marketers may have a more difficult time understanding the creation of the collage and its interpretation. Deep, creative thinking and an open, creative mind are necessary.
The key contribution of this book is new labels and their meanings and applications. Examples of the visual images of the seven metaphors appear in a color glossy insert in the middle of the book. Under each image, the reader is provided with the source of the visual and the narrative interpretation of the meaning within the image. Sometimes, the meanings and interpretations of the objects and experiences are obvious, and sometimes they are not—for example, vodka as balance, hospitals as transformations, selling a home as a journey, theater as a container, technology companies as connectors, universities as life-long resources, and breakfast rituals as control.
These metaphors go far beyond Freudian interpretations, such as women baking cakes as a symbol of childbirth or men smoking cigars as a symbol of masculinity. Within the framework of the seven global metaphors, the authors offer an interesting application to brand identity. What does the brand do for the customer, and what does it mean in relation to being? The metaphors and their stories are used for creating communication about the brand/product, which touches consumers at the core of their being.
This book makes a good addition to a library of monographs on consumer psychology. However, this book also belongs in the classroom to open the eyes of students to the complexity of our being, our thinking, and our motivations. It would also provide worthwhile supplemental reading for a graduate course in consumer behavior. For marketing managers who are interested in thinking deeply about their products/brands and their relationship with their customers, this book is a “must buy.”
—Judith Lynne Zaichkowsky, Simon Fraser University.
References
Deshpandé, Rohit and Gerald Zaltman (1982), “Factors Affecting the Use of Marketing Research Information: A Path Analysis,” Journal of Marketing Research, 19 (February), 14–31.
Moorman, Christine, Gerald Zaltman, and Rohit Deshpandé (1992), “Relationships Between Providers and Users of Marketing Research: The Dynamics of Trust Within and Between Organizations,” Journal of Marketing Research, 29 (August), 314–28.
Zaltman, Gerald (1997), “Rethinking Marketing Research: Putting People Back,” Journal of Marketing Research, 34 (November), 424–37.