Gerald Zaltman

Harvard University | Harvard · Harvard Business School

This article’s objective is to inspire and provide guidance on the development of marketing knowledge based on the theories-in-use (TIU) approach. The authors begin with a description of the TIU approach and compare it with other inductive and deductive research approaches. The benefits of engaging in TIU-based research are discussed, including the...

From focus groups to clinical interviews to cognitive, neurological and biological approaches, market research borrows heavily from the behavioural sciences. Borrowing ideas and methods from other disciplines, often with adaptations, while clearly valuable, also brings a significant risk of ‘getting it wrong’. Problems arise when researchers do not...

Imagination is essential to marketing scholarship and practice. However, it is neither well understood nor sufficiently used. This paper encourages giving more attention to imagination by highlighting issues meriting further understanding. Readers are encouraged to ask questions such as: Why is imagination important? What job does it perform? Are p...

A New Marketing Science (NMS) is proposed that can dramatically improve a firm’s marketplace performance. The NMS challenges managers to dare to think and act differently. It generates deep insights into the thoughts and actions of both customers and managers and how the two mind-sets interact. As several examples illustrate, it departs from the “o...

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 inh...

We describe three ways that customer experience has been conceptualized and measured. “True experience” is a customer's personal interpretation of “what happened.” Because significant aspects of customers' interpretations are unconscious, they cannot be revealed by traditional measures. The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is capable o...

A major goal for advertising is to have an enduring emotional impact on an audience by facilitating their creation of personally relevant understandings of an advertisement. This is achieved through a process of cocreation in which consumers integrate advertising content with their own attitudes, beliefs, and values to produce the meaning of an adv...

This article focuses on the role of implicit knowledge consumers have about particular brands, products or names. The major findings of several studies, conducted at the Mind of the Market Laboratory at Harvard Business School, are presented with specific emphasis on studies in which response time measurements were the core method. The results reve...

Planteamiento mercadológico sobre las decisiones y el comportamiento de los consumidores, basado en la afirmación de que cerca del 95 por ciento del pensamiento humano se produce en el inconsciente. El fracaso de una gran mayoría de la investigaciones de mercado estriba -según Gerald Zaltman- en que las herramientas desgastadas de la mercadotecnia...

For more than three decades, research has theorized about and investigated consumers' attitudes toward advertising. In this study, we interview fourteen U.S. consumers using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, a method that involves semi-structured, in-depth, personal interviews centered around visual images. Our metaphor and cross-case ana...

Consumer research needs broader intellectual peripheral vision. This requires learning to see relevance in seemingly distant fields and taking ignorance as a friend. A particularly challenging but highly relevant topic concerns the (un)conscious mind and the essential unity of body, brain, mind, and society. The two books discussed here are excitin...

There is a growing recognition in Corporate America and other markets throughout the world that knowledge, the result of learning, and competence in technological and managerial skills are key competitive advantages. Business Week estimates that approximately $12 billion is devoted to executive education annually. However, only a quarter of this is...

There is a growing recognition in Corporate America and other markets throughout the world that knowledge, the result of learning, and competence in technological and managerial skills are key competitive advantages. Business Week estimates that approximately $12 billion is devoted to executive education annually. However, only a quarter of this is...

Research methods are generally improved through new understandings of scientific procedure, validity, and reliability. Variations in these understandings - among knowledge communities as diverse as ethnographers, statisticians, historians, and even practitioners and researchers - yield a rich set of innovations in quantitative tools, experimental d...

Research methods are generally improved through new understandings of scientific procedure, validity, and reliability. Variations in these understandings—among knowledge communities as diverse as ethnographers, statisticians, historians, and even practitioners and researchers—yield a rich set of innovations in quantitative tools, experimental desig...

Twenty-five years after publishing one of the pioneering articles on social marketing in the Journal of Marketing, Philip Kotler shares with SMQ these thoughts; When we published "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change" in the July 1971 issue of The Journal of Marketing, we recognized that there would be some opposition to the ideas...

La recherche sur les stratégies d'influence a été traditionnellement conduite dans des cadres interorganisationnels. En partant de cette tradition, les auteurs se concentrent sur les stratégies d'influence utilisées par les dirigeants dans des centres d'achat. Ils développent un cadre de travail basé sur trois dimensions pour classer six stratégies...

Research on influence strategies has typically been conducted in interorganizational settings. In a departure from this tradition, the authors focus on influence strategies used by managers in buying centers. They develop a three-dimensional framework for classifying six prominent influence strategies-threats, promises, recommendations, requests, l...

Research on influence strategies has typically been conducted in interorganizational settings. In a departure from this tradition, the authors focus on influence strategies used by managers in buying centers. They develop a three-dimensional framework for classifying six prominent influence strategies—threats, promises, recommendations, requests, l...

Building on previous work suggesting that trust is critical in facilitating exchange relationships, the authors describe a comprehensive theory of trust in market research relationships. This theory focuses on the factors that determine users' trust in their researchers, including individual, interpersonal, organizational, interorganizational/inter...

Building on previous work suggesting that trust is critical in facilitating exchange relationships, the authors describe a comprehensive theory of trust in market research relationships. This theory focuses on the factors that determine users’ trust in their researchers, including individual, interpersonal, organizational, interorganizational/inter...

The authors investigate the role of trust between knowledge users and knowledge providers. The kind of knowledge of special concern is formal market research. Users include marketing and nonmarketing managers; providers include marketing researchers within a user's own firm and those external to the firm. A theory of the relationships centering on...

The authors investigate the role of trust between knowledge users and knowledge providers. The kind of knowledge of special concern is formal market research. Users include marketing and nonmarketing managers; providers include marketing researchers within a user's own firm and those external to the firm. A theory of the relationships centering on...

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.

Despite recent attention to organizational issues in the management of advertising, sales, new product development, and channels, there has been little empirical study of the management of the marketing research function. The study reported complements earlier work on the use of marketing information in consumer goods businesses by examining factor...

Despite recent attention to organizational issues in the management of advertising, sales, new product development, and channels, there has been little empirical study of the management of the marketing research function. The study reported complements earlier work on the use of marketing information in consumer goods businesses by examining factor...

Although much study has examined how and why consumers use information in making product choices, little work has been done on the use of market research information in product/service policy decisions. The authors report on the producer side of the market research dyad (market researchers' perceptions of the use of research) to complement an earli...

Although much study has examined how and why consumers use information in making product choices, little work has been done on the use of market research information in product/service policy decisions. The authors report on the producer side of the market research dyad (market researchers’ perceptions of the use of research) to complement an earli...

Argues that the current debate on national productivity and innovation has largely ignored the contributions of social science. In the present article, 3 trends and developments are considered: social science as a decision aid, social science as a source of social technology, and social science as a tool for understanding innovation and productivit...

The authors evaluate several factors affecting the attention given to or "use" of specific market research information by marketing managers. They apply path analysis to test a model of research use involving 11 variables. Factors found to be especially important are organizational structure, technical quality, surprise, actionability, and research...

The authors evaluate several factors affecting the attention given to or “use” of specific market research information by marketing managers. They apply path analysis to test a model of research use involving 11 variables. Factors found to be especially important are organizational structure, technical quality, surprise, actionability, and research...

The point of departure for the present article is previous attempts to profile complaining, dissatisfied consumers. By reviewing the previous literature, three “models” were identified: the “resource”, the “learning” and the “personality” model respectivey. An empirical test of the three models reveals only modest differences between complaining an...

Esta obra ofrece fundamentos para el desarrollo de estrategias de cambio social planificado, en organizaciones de diverso tipo.

This paper presents some highlights drawn from a two-day workshop on organizational buyer behavior cosponsored by the Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh and the American Marketing Association. The highlights are presented in the form of ideas which are both deserving and in need of further exploration. The highlights are the coll...

Whenever I am called upon to make prescriptive statements to a group which can't easily hold me accountable for the consequences, I am always reminded of the story of the chicken and the pig. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, a chicken and a pig were walking down the street one day and came upon a restaurant that had a big sign i...

An understanding of ethical issues involved in marketing research may contribute to the quality of research data. This article discusses subjects' rights in marketing research and how their violation may affect the quality of data.

An understanding of ethical issues involved in marketing research may contribute to the quality of research data. This article discusses subjects’ rights in marketing research and how their violation may affect the quality of data.

This paper presents the first empirical sociometric evidence of an international invisible college for information exchange. Using sociometric techniques and ratings of professional status as a researcher, a highly elite invisible college was identified which crossed international boundaries. Members of this elite group were found to be in relative...