How Focus Groups Can Provide Real Focus
Nov 4th, 2009 by David Svet
Focus groups are a personal peeve of mine. If I were prone to extremes, I would call focus groups the most abused research method in all of marketing. It’s sad, because focus groups can be a really great way to gather information. But, most of the time they are horribly misused as a testing tool.
For a simplistic example, let’s plan a birthday party. If you want to know what a bunch of seven year olds want to eat at a birthday party, ask them — well in advance of the party. You may get some great ideas. They may tell you they want cake, chocolate cake, shaped like a dinosaur, with cherry eyes. You might learn that some of them can’t eat nuts, or prefer vanilla cake. All are things you can use because they are being drawn from personal experiences and preferences multiplied by other’s ideas in a group setting. Filter out the silly answers and you are good to go. This is a focus group.
Now let’s go to the party. We’re serving chocolate dinosaur cake with cherry eyes that’s chasing a vanilla dinosaur cake. There’s ice cream, whipped cream, nuts, sprinkles, jimmies, gummy bears, and every manner of junk a kid could want. Then you turn them loose to make their plates, stand back, and take notes. You can imagine what you will observe — normal behavior that each child would exhibit at home? Hardly. This is not a focus group — it’s chaos.
Focus groups are terrible for asking people to describe how they would behave in a particular situation. Would you buy product A or product B? Do you prefer red or blue packages? This is utterly absurd. Asking people to make conscious decisions predicting their unconscious behavior in a situation that is out of context and polluted with observers is a gross waste of time and money. They will make the same kinds of decisions that the seven year olds made in the birthday free for all.
Focus groups are great for gathering information prior to beginning work or long after it is finished. They are a reasonable forum for people to talk, listen, share, and reflect on one another’s thoughts and experiences. They work when they are used to simply gather information — no wrong ideas, no right ideas, just a group focusing on an issue.
I think it’s best to avoid the mess in the first place. How about you?
Photo: Joey Gannon from Pittsburgh, PA
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I agree, I’ve experienced a lot of frustration with them. Typically when they are used to try and solve every single marketing problem that exists.
However, I do like them when the goal is to explore a consumer problem that needs a new innovative solution. You can get people talking about a problem and then use that data (with ethnography and quant data) as stimuli for new products/services.
It’s all about finding a good moderator and thinking strategically about the answers you want to get from the research.
Absolutely, Ben! Focus groups are meant to focus a group on a particular issue. Then the data that is gathered needs to be augmented with field data from ethnographic studies to understand the realities and nuances of the focus group data. Finally, quant data can demonstrate the validity of the idea.
It’s great to hear from someone who understands this stuff! Thanks, Ben. Your team is very fortunate to have you around!