Using in person research to appeal and market to your consumer’s thoughts and emotions
 

ZMET In-Situ

Research In Person Where Your Consumers Are

Imagine interviewing a new mom in a research facility about changing her baby's diaper. She could tell you a lot and you would get a good understanding of what that process is like.

Now, imagine watching her changing a diaper. Even better. You can see the baby squirming around, feel the urgency to get the wipes out of the package, hear her baby crying, smell the poop, see the frustration on her face, and sense her relief when it is over.

 ZMET In-Situ, our proprietary ethnographic tool, leverages our ZMET in-depth interviewing technique in the places that matter to your consumers: their homes, their places of business, a retail establishment –wherever you need to understand them while in the context of a specific space.

Sometimes in standard ethnographic interviews respondents are overly polite and worried more about being a good host than telling you how they really feel. ZMET breaks through all that to deliver insight into your consumers' habits, interruptions, concerns, aspirations, delights, and frustrations.


How It Works

First, your specially recruited participants will be given a ZMET Question - a homework assignment to collect images that reflect their deepest thoughts and feelings about the topic. 

Our trained, certified ZMET interviewers explore the meaning of those images and the accompanying emotional territory.

Then we spend time watching respondents do their thing. We might watch them do yard work, cook, play with their kids, or apply their makeup. And our interviews ask ZMET-based probes along the way, exploring how consumers are feeling in the moment and understand the meaning of the little things they do that they might not even be aware of.

When to Use or, a Better Question, Where to Use

If what happens where is important to your mission – at home, in a particular room, in the car, in the workplace where B2B decisions are made – In Situ is astonishingly revealing. For example: 

  • Interviewing consumers about the meaning of home

  • Understanding how people use a prototype kitchen appliance

  • Seeing how children play with a particular toy

  • Observing the rituals associated with doing laundry

What You'll Learn

In addition to the rich psychological insights that you unearth in any ZMET study,  ZMET® In-Situ also provides the opportunities for multi-media deliverables such as a video highlight reel or sensory mood-boards gleaned from the environments.

Next Up: Quantitative Tools

Examine your business through multiple lenses.