Telephone Focus Groups
Telephone Focus Groups Overview
A telephone focus group is simply a market research technique in which a group of people are recruited to join a conference call discussion at a particular time and date to discuss a topic, such as a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. This is a type of focus group that eliminates the need for travel, and therefore a good part of the costs of live focus groups.
Typically telephone focus groups are managed by a market research firm, as are physical focus groups. The facility that is hired to host the telephone 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 they will purchase additional contact names if necessary.
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 telephone focus groups the incentives vary, but are typically in the $50 price range for a typical 2 hour focus group). Telephone focus groups often take place in the evening or sometimes on the weekend, depending on the type of respondents needed. In some cases there are focus group moderators that specialize in online focus groups because the skills are somewhat different than what are needed for physical focus groups.
The Telephone 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. After that 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 are typically a number of sensitizing questions to allow the respondents to feel comfortable with the topic to be discussed and to understand the somewhat foreign environment of having a discussion online.
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 guide the majority of the discussion, although good moderators will stray from the guide when something unanticipated, but germane to the research topic comes up.
Construction of an Telephone Focus Group
Putting together a Telephone Focus Groups is a lot like putting together a discussion guide for any other medium. The challenge is to sense when a respondent gets lost, (without the visual cues that you get in face to face research) or checks out of the discussion and needs to be pulled back in. There can also be challenges with one participant dominating the conversation, although there are options for dealing with that also.
Telephone Focus Groups Pros
- The two primary advantages of telephone focus groups are the travel costs that are saved, and the ability to have a discussion with a group of respondents who are distributed physically.
- As with other focus groups, there can be a synergy in telephone focus groups where respondents piggy-back off of other respondents' ideas in order to come up with a better solution than you might get with several people working separately.
- There is a reasonable amount of anonymity for telephone focus groups which makes them an option for certain types of research topics that have an element of sensitivity.
Telephone Focus Groups Cons
- A great deal of communication is non-verbal only having a persons voice to gauge their engagement level and understanding of a concept can be a significant disadvantage, especially with new and complex topics.
- The inability to show visual aids is a disadvantage that sometimes limits the types of research that can be done via a telephone focus group.
- 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.
- The quality of the moderator can have a great effect on the quality of information that comes out of a focus group.
Telephone Focus Group Timing
Telephone focus groups can typically be done quite quickly and 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 Telephone 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 Telephone Focus Groups do not provide as much respondent anonymity as do online research so you should be cautious about conducting research that could be embarrassing to respondents via live Telephone Focus Groups.
