Market Research Focus Groups
The company I work for used to use market research surveys instead of focus groups. The idea was simply that it was cheaper and the results would still be valuable. We would basically corral college students on their way to and from classes by a little kiosk. We would give them cheap little knickknacks and doodads, t-shirts and binders and organizers, as a way to bribe them to take a few minutes to fill out a survey. We figure that we were saving thousands of dollars that we would have to pay for market research focus groups, and that we would get results that were comparable if not just as good.
In retrospect, we were being nave. Don't get me wrong, in some circumstances a market research survey is a great way to go. If you need preliminary information or only have a short amount of time to gather data, surveys are the best. After all, you put them together in no time flat, administer them, and analyze the results by the next weekend if not the next day. A market research focus group, on the other hand, is a much more involved thing. It takes a lot of time and effort to put together, and often requires the hiring of outside experts. You need to ensure that your participants are really qualified, and that they are willing to stay for the whole time. In short, it can be a hassle.
That hassle is entirely justified, however. Market research focus groups give you a much higher quality of data, and they do it consistently. You typical market research focus group takes anywhere from three days to two weeks, and involves as few as one or two products or as many as dozens. Because you have the undivided attention of your participants, you can introduce them to small, trivial variations to see which ones they like the best. You can show them dozens of commercials to see which ones capture their interests and which ones leave them cold. In market research focus groups, you can really get inside your consumer base and understand the way their mindsets work in a way that market surveys don't let you do.
Nowadays, we usually switch it off. We do most of our preliminary work with market surveys, but then we switched to market research focus groups for the final phases of product development, brand placement, and the like. It seems to be a good combination because it combines cheap, quick research with more in-depth studies.
