Adding Value and Insight: Applying Clean Language Interviewing to Market Research

Abstract

Chapter Summary

This chapter explores clean language interviewing for qualitative market research. It focuses primarily on how clean language interviewing was used within a process devised by the authors called ‘value-strings’. The chapter describes this process and how it was used in a client project for a food company that wanted to understand their customers' motivations and decision-making in relation to buying and using tinned sweetcorn.

Value-strings provided insights that went beyond the practical, functional attributes of the product to those that related to the benefits to the respondents of consuming sweetcorn and through to more tacit, often difficult-to-reach information about their values and beliefs. The client used the outcomes to develop a new TV advertising campaign.

The steps of the value-strings process, along with the optional metaphor elicitation steps, are described and illustrated using examples from the project. We show how we integrated opportunities for metaphor elicitation into value-strings, adding to the flexibility of the process and accommodating the client's requirement for the project to provide visual metaphors as well as verbal information.

Time being always in short supply in market research projects, we also describe the quick approach we used to enable respondents to access and generate metaphors. Some findings from the project, along with challenges and learnings are offered.

Citation

Sullivan, W. and Tunney, D. (2022), "Adding Value and Insight: Applying Clean Language Interviewing to Market Research", Cairns-Lee, H., Lawley, J. and Tosey, P. (Ed.) Clean Language Interviewing, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 191-203. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-330-820221015