July Tip: Ask another entrepreneur to recommend a reputable market research firm or focus-group facility. Use professionals to recruit participants. The process is time consuming, and the experts know best which types of individuals to recruit for the market research you need. Be receptive to whatever you hear.
As you observe the focus group in action, you may end up disappointed if you expect participants to rave about your product. Act on the results. Review and analyze the findings, and, together with your management team, decide how they can best be used to boost company performance — and customer satisfaction. Online focus groups. Focus-group sessions can also be held online, in a chat room superimposed on your Web site. You "watch" the action from your office computer.
Online groups have two major benefits: You can cut costs, and you get a report on results more quickly — usually within a day rather than up to four weeks later for traditional focus groups. Telephone-conference focus-group sessions have advantages and disadvantages similar to online sessions.
If necessary, you can reduce focus-group expenses by doing some of the work internally. You could save some cost by finding the focus-group participants yourself. Online and phone-conference focus groups also cost less. You can also consider writing the focus-group questions yourself, but a skilled moderator will probably be able to write better questions that provide more useful information.
Baichwal wanted to set up a new division that would provide low-cost, but still high-quality, versions of her top-line designs. It provides the perspective of why they do what they do. How they think, feel, and act based on interacting with them holistically and understanding how and why you are making an impact in their lives.
This is what we enable our clients to do every day. We have empowered enterprise customers and research agencies around the globe to explore the world through their customer lens since , when we were the first research technology business to live stream focus groups, making customer engagement more scalable, efficient, and accessible. The group is being held in a viewing centre and the Client, a leading European shower manufacturer is watching and listening first hand through a two way mirror.
These are all examples of a focus group in action. Focus groups are essentially group discussions which rely heavily on the interaction between group members and the relationship between the researcher and the respondents. Focus groups have been a dominant form of qualitative data collection in market research for more than 30 years. The newspapers have been proactive in reporting his affinity for the methodology and some have even suggested he dares not make a move without testing out his intentions within a focus group.
Despite their recent shunt into the public eye over the past decade, focus groups are nothing new. This non-directive approach increased in appeal in the s and s as many sociologists were looking for alternative ways of conducting interviews as the traditional closed response choice questionnaires were being questioned.
Paul Lazersfeld, an academic also involved in marketing,used and documented the approach in evaluating audience responses to stimulus material such as films, radio and written manuals.
It had become recognized that people revealed sensitive information when they felt they were in a safe, comfortable place with people like themselves. This marked the inception of the focus group, and many of the procedures accepted as common practice in focus groups were laid down in the work carried out by Robert Merton with his contemporaries Marjorie Fiske and Patricia Kendall The Focused Interview Despite this early enthusiasm, the focus group as a research method seemed to disappear from usage among the academic community.
However, the market research community embraced the approach. After the war, business was booming, development was high, and market researchers were charged with finding out how to make their products most attractive to potential customers.
The focus group appeared to be the ideal method to stay in touch with customers, in both exploring their needs and identifying their attitudes. The focus group technique has evolved over the years within market research and has strongly influenced the business community from product design through to promotions and advertising. In the early s the method re-emerged in the academic community and was being used in academic research to understand attitudes and behaviors.
Around this time, the communications industry adopted the methodology to examine how audiences interpreted media messages, and with this the value of the focus group became increasingly recognized. With this recognition, focus groups have become an increasingly well known method for collecting qualitative data in all fields of research.
The focus group is a research technique used to collect data through group interaction on a topic determined by the researcher. Thus the Client determines the focus of the group and the data comes from the group.
Essentially, it is a group experience. It comprises a small number of carefully selected people who are recruited to a group discussion based on their commonality of experience. Focus groups typically comprise five to ten people. The group needs to be small enough to allow everyone the opportunity to share insights, and yet large enough to provide group interaction and diversity of experience.
Larger groups can inhibit discussion due to lack of opportunity and smaller groups can result in a smaller pool of ideas. Focus group participants have a degree of homogeneity, and this is important to the researcher. This similarity is the basis for recruitment, and indeed, specific requirements may be necessary for attendance at the group.
It is crucial to identify who can give you the information you need. It is common for researchers and Clients to jointly identify the key criterion which identify the individuals for focus group discussions. For example, when researching the use of sealant and filler compounds, it may be necessary to recruit builders with a certain number of years experience and a minimum level of usage of sealant and fillers in their work practice.
Focus groups are a research method which delivers qualitative data that is rich in depth and not numerical in nature. Data tends to be in words, pictures, symbols etc.
The group provides the forum for discussion, and the group moderator, i. The focus group is more than a group interview. The key element is the group process; the interaction between the group members. The questions in a focus group discussion are carefully designed to elicit the views of the respondents. A discussion guide is prepared prior to the group and the group moderator uses this as the vehicle for discussion. Careful design of the guide ensures a logical flow of conversation around the topic area, and ensures a clear focus for the discussion.
The topic guide is reflective of how groups operate, commencing with introductory questions to help the group to form. This serves to get people talking and feeling comfortable enough to proffer their opinions and experiences. Questions then progress to yield more information, and there should be no pressure on the group members to alter their views, rather, attention is centred on understanding the comments and thought processes as the issues are discussed.
Focus groups deliver qualitative depth information, where exploration and identification of attitudes, behaviors and processes are the chief research objectives. They can be used in three ways in the research design:. The type of design will depend on the objectives of the research.
When focus groups are used as the sole source of data, the objectives centre on identification, exploration, and illumination, whereas, when these objectives are coupled with quantification, a multi method design will be the preferred option McQuarrie Individuals are not under pressure to give spontaneous answers. They can digest the points raised by other members and, as they consider the implications of issues raised, and ideas may be sparked off which would remain untapped in a personal interview.
Typical market research situations when focus groups are used are:. For the researcher, the decision about whether to carry out focus group discussions or individual interviews is based on several factors.
Focus groups are not always practical, and within the business community, it has to be accepted that geography often precludes the bringing together of a focus group. Focus groups are no different from any other research method in that they too have their strengths and weaknesses. They are not always suitable and some situations and topic areas need to be dealt with accordingly.
Culture, the sensitivity of the topic area, difficulties with disclosure, the effect of the hierarchy within the respondent group and the moderator themselves are all considerations that need to be looked at when taking the decision to use focus groups in the research design. The culture of the respondents in relation to openness, honesty and disclosure warrants consideration. In many cultures, particularly in Western countries, people have less difficulty sharing their views with others and engaging in debate where their views may differ from others within the group.
The culture is of free speech and Western familiarity that makes the focus group discussion come naturally. However, this cannot be assumed for all cultures. In many Eastern countries, this is not the case. To appear openly critical of products, services and suppliers cannot be assumed to be so easy. The natural response is to be more polite and present the account which represents that which is expected to be heard rather than the personal account, which may be considered less socially acceptable.
The market research industry is less well developed in eastern countries, and this may well be due to the nature of disclosure. They claim that group dynamics tend to become inhibited in mixed-gender or age-focus groups.
In addition, specific topics can be explored in greater depth when there is homogeneity among the participants with regard to usage of or attitudes toward the products being tested.
Moderators play an important role in determining the success of focus groups. Well-trained moderators can provide a great deal of added value in terms of their past experience, skills, and techniques. On the other hand, poorly trained moderators are likely to fail to generate quality output from their focus groups. In addition to professional, full-time focus group moderators, other types of individuals who often serve as moderators include professional researchers, academicians, marketing consultants, psychologists or psychiatrists, and company representatives.
Focus group moderators serve as discussion leaders. They try to stimulate discussion while saying as little as possible. They are not interviewers. They usually work from a guide that provides them with an outlined plan of how the discussion should flow. The guide includes topics to be covered together with probing questions that can be used to stimulate further discussion. Moderators try to include everyone in the discussion. They allocate available time to make sure the required topics are covered.
When the discussion digresses, it is up to the moderator to refocus the group on the topic at hand. When setting up a focus group session, it is important to give careful consideration to the physical setting where it will take place. The location should be one that encourages relaxed participation and informal, spontaneous comments.
The focus group facility must be of adequate size and have comfortable seating for all of the participants. Living room and conference room settings both provide good locations for focus groups, but public places—such as restaurants and auditoriums—are generally regarded as too distracting for gaining optimal results.
In selecting a focus group site it is also important to make it geographically convenient for the participants. Locations that are hard to find or located in out of the way places may cause delays and scheduling problems. Finally, sites should be determined with an eye toward the schedules and locations of managers and executives who should be in attendance.
The facility should also be relatively soundproof, to minimize outside noises and distractions. While focus group sessions are almost always audiotaped and many are videotaped, client company representatives usually like to observe their focus groups firsthand. With this in mind, many focus group discussion areas are equipped with one-way mirrors that allow company representatives to observe without intruding.
An alternative viewing arrangement would be to use a remote video hookup that would allow company representatives to view the proceedings on a video screen.
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