Focus Groups
Focus Groups Overview
A focus group is simply a market research technique in which a group of people are recruited to come together to discuss a topic, such as a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are typically asked in a specially built facility called a focus group facility (image). The main idea of a focus group is to encourage the respondents to interact with one another, discuss the concept, share ideas, and hopefully even come up with ideas or insights that might help to develop an improved product.
The focus group facilities (typically done in more than one city) that are hired to host the focus groups will have their own list of potential respondents, contact information and often includes basic information about the respondent such as: occupation, number of family members in house, zip code which indicates likely income and personal activities and possibly likely household income. If they can't recruit the required number of respondents there are a number of companies that sell lists of potential respondents and facility will purchase an additional amount of customer contacts (called sample) to ensure that they will have the required number of focus group attendees. The focus group facility will contact potential respondents by phone or e-mail.
Initially they will ask a number of questions [screener] in order to see if the potential respondent is qualified to participate in the research project. For the potential respondents that qualify, the focus group facility representative will explain the incentive for participating in the research (for live focus groups in the US the incentive is typically between $50 and $200 depending on how challenging the recruiting criteria is). They will also explain the starting and ending time of the focus group - which is typically 2 hours long. It's typical to conduct two focus groups each evening, usually beginning about the time that the workday ends, although lunchtime groups are sometimes used as well.
The Focus Groups
When the focus group starts, the moderator will typically review the key screening questions just to make sure that all of the attendees are qualified and that no mistakes were made. The moderator will introduce him/herself and ask that each person introduce themselves and what their role is with regard to the topic at hand. Then there are typically a number of sensitizing questions to allow the respondents to feel comfortable with the topic to be discussed and to know something about the other respondents involved in the discussion. Once the respondents seem to feel comfortable with their environment the moderator will steer the discussion towards the research topic, and from that point the moderator's discussion guide will generally guide most of the rest of the discussion (although good moderators may not follow the discussion guide perfectly, instead allowing the group to dictate the order of certain topics.
Construction of a Focus Group
Putting together a Focus Groups is a lot like putting together a questionnaire for any other medium, although the moderator has a great deal more flexibility to read the non-verbal signals and make adjustments as necessary.
Focus Groups Pros
- A great deal of communication is non-verbal and being physically together allows a moderator to pick-up, and follow-through on subtle cues that might be missed through other mediums.
- The ability to show a broad array of visual aids, or to have the respondent physically interact with a prototype or control panel is a big advantage.
- There can be a synergy in focus groups where respondents piggy-back off of other respondents ideas in order to come up with a better solution than you probably would not get with several people working separately.
Focus Groups Cons
- The costs of having respondents travel to a focus group facility and having a moderator and business representatives traveling from city to city can get expensive.
- It's possible to have a single person with a strong personality or much more expertise on the topic at hand that could sway the group in a different direction than it might go without such a character.
- However, moderators have a number of methods for dealing with overbearing respondents and good moderators can handle them without making everyone uncomfortable or "shutting down" the talkative respondent.
- The quality of the moderator can have a great effect on the quality of information that comes out of a focus group.
Focus Group Timing
Focus Groups are one of the fastest types of market research. If there are not a great deal of visual aids to be produced and the team is in general agreement about the direction of research, a single region of focus groups can be fielded in a week or two. In certain cases it's possible to go from planning to screener to fielding to data review to presentation in a matter of only a few weeks.
Special Considerations
Physical focus groups do not provide much respondent anonymity so you should be cautious about conducting research that could be embarrassing to respondents via live focus groups. In fact in Japan, focus groups are often separated by gender because women are reluctant to speak over a man, or to say something that might contradict something that has been said by a male respondent. These issues should be considered as the grouping of respondents is discussed.
