Semiotic Thinking for Marketers

Abstract

There was a very famous aphorism “Know thyself”, written in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo in Ancient Greece town of Delphi. It has huge effect in the whole Greek philosophical tradition, humanities and especially in psychology, but not in marketing. Market specialists pretend to know a lot about the attitude of mind and behavior of the competitors and consumers, and on the cultural specifics which they should consider in their work. Paradoxically, usually marketers are not supposed to be respondents in marketing research, they are always on the “scientific” side of the mirror, watching focus groups and in-depth interviews. But whether they are truly familiar with their own way of thinking? This paper is dedicated to this question, having a look at mental construction peculiar to people involved in marketing. Zaltman Technique is based on the belief that respondents think in metaphors and projective techniques are the only successful method for extracting the mental map in given product category. In the case of marketers attitude we don’t really need focus groups, because we have quite a lot samples in order to see that maritime metaphors dominate the thinking schema and the paper will try to answer why.