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This chapter describes the work-life balance project, which was the first to investigate the potential of clean language as an academic research interview methodology (Lawley, Meyer, Meese, Sullivan, & Tosey, 2010). It resulted in the publication of an article in the British Journal of Management (Tosey, Lawley, & Meese, 2014) that has since been cited in several academic papers, including Langley and Meziani's (2020) review of interview methodologies in the field of organisational change. This chapter describes the project's methodology and findings and highlights six lessons learnt that have helped to inform the further development of clean language interviewing.

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.

In this book the terms ‘clean language’ and ‘clean language interviewing’ are written using lower case, according to the convention of the American Psychological Association (sixth edition). ‘Clean language interviewing’ is sometimes abbreviated to CLI.

Modelling is a research methodology that has received little academic attention since it began to be formulated in the 1970s. On the spectrum of clean language interviewing (CLI) applications described in Chapter 1, the most sophisticated is modelling, and especially modelling that takes place in real time during the interview.

This chapter defines what we mean by ‘a model’ and ‘modelling’ and explains how they are related to CLI. We situate the chapter by recounting how modelling became linked to CLI. To conclude we consider some of the methodological challenges faced by both the interviewee and interviewer involved in a modelling research project.

We also explain how interviewee metaphors discussed in Chapter 3 can support the modelling process. Much of the modelling that takes place during an interview resides in the background of the interaction. To illustrate modelling we provide an annotated transcript of a symbolic modelling interview that uses clean language to model the skill of ‘knowing what is essential’.

To conclude this book, we take stock of the state of the field of clean language interviewing (CLI). The field has matured considerably in 20 years and yet is still young and emergent. Through articulating the principles of CLI and exploring its application in many fields of practice, we hope this book might come to be seen as a milestone on its path. From its informal beginnings and earliest applications, we believe we can claim with justification that clean language interviewing has developed into a well-specified, well-tested and well-appreciated method that can be used to access both explicitly- and tacitly-held knowledge in a wide range of research projects.

As editors of this volume, we have been gratified and humbled by the ways in which CLI has been used by the contributors. Part II has demonstrated the value of clean language interviewing in both academic and applied research. The applications presented illustrate that CLI has breadth – given the diverse fields in which it has been applied – as well as depth, due to the various levels at which it can be used.

Our aim in this chapter is to reflect on themes that have emerged from the contributions in Part II and the experience of compiling the book as a whole. We begin by reviewing the frameworks that we regard as essential to CLI, then discuss three issues of practice and theory that have emerged from Part II. We sum up the key benefits and limitations of CLI for interviewers and interviewees before indicating some possible directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is an examination of the role of brand personification in the development of the concepts of brand personality and brand relationships.

The paper is a critical evaluation of literature from the 1950s and onwards, examining the evolution and development of brand personality and brand relationship theory and the role of brand personification.

The major finding is that brand personification was developed as a research “gimmick” and that this “gimmick” provided the foundations for the development of the brand personality and brand relationship concepts. Further, the paper traces the evolution of the brand personality concept and identifies the ways in which it has been adapted from its original meaning.

The paper contributes to the branding literature by providing a critical evaluation of the history of marketing concepts and by providing insights into the role that motivation research played in the development of modern brand theory.

In today's ever‐increasing globalization of services and brands, service‐oriented businesses need to attend to the satisfaction of their customers both domestically and abroad while transcending unique cultural differences from country to country. This study provides a cross‐cultural comparison of service satisfaction of fast food establishments in four English‐speaking countries. It is based on data collected from customers of five globally‐franchised fast‐food chains, using a previously developed service satisfaction instrument. The study reveals two empirically derived, cross‐cultural fast‐food customer satisfaction dimensions: satisfaction with the personal service and satisfaction with the service setting. Should future research support this study's findings, the measurement of cross‐cultural service satisfaction among franchised brands and services could aid business managers’ efforts to assess the quality of the services they provide across national boundaries and on a more real time, practical basis.

Looks at a specific variant of systems thinking, called critical systems thinking, which is an approach that was developed in the UK during the 1980s. In particular, consideration is given to “rule‐bound” systems – scenarios where the possibilities for change have been found to be problematic. The characteristics of such situations will initially be set out, focusing on the power relations that appear to pervade such situations. A prison‐based change management initiative is used to show how critical systems thinking can be employed, and provide some reflections on the process of change management and the outcomes achieved. These reflections point to some difficulties experienced that emerged from the rule‐bound nature of the problem situation and ways in which such difficulties might be addressed in similar situations in the future are suggested. Insights for both private and public sector organizations are drawn throughout the paper.

External facilitation has been shown to increase the implementation and aid sustainment of new clinical practices. The purpose of this paper is to describe the addition of facilitation to web-based training on dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills to promote adoption of this intervention among diverse mental health providers at US Veterans Health Administration facilities.

In total, 41 participants completed six web-based modules and met in two groups monthly over nine months by telephone with a facilitator who was also an experienced DBT skills group therapist. All participants agreed to conduct a DBT skills group as part of training. The facilitators employed a variety of engagement strategies to meet the evolving needs of participants during the training period. Participants completed an online evaluation of the modules and their facilitation experience at six weeks post-training and responded to an e-mail query at five months post-training about conducting a DBT group.

Overall, participants found the training and monthly interprofessional calls with the facilitator useful. Five months post-training, 33 of 41 participants reported conducting a DBT skills group, thus improving access to this intervention. Participants said the biggest barrier to training was finding time during clinic hours to complete the modules, despite assurances of support from local leaders.

This project provides evidence that virtual facilitation enhances training and promotes the adoption of new clinical practices.