 Definition Focus Group. Description.
A Focus Group is a qualitative research method in marketing. A focus group consists of a carefully selected representative range of people who discuss and provide feedback about aspects of a product, service, issue, idea or advertisement. The group is 'focused' in the sense that it involves some kind of collective activity.
Focus Group interviews were first described in 1946 by Robert K. Merton and Kendall and first initiated by Merton in the Bureau of Applied Social Science in 1987. The use of Focus Groups has become widespread in qualitative market research. Its powerful ability to describe or predict market acceptance, consumption behavior or customer satisfaction made Focus Groups a valuable marketing tool.
In practice a researcher puts together a group of people, usually ranging from 8 to 12, who represent potential or actual customers of a product or a service. For example a toothpaste, a political party or a TV program. The Focus Group freely talks about the needs for the product, advantages and disadvantages, features (packaging, concept, target, advertisement, social implications, etc…) and characteristics implied in the product management. It is common to use a facilitator who helps the group to stay focused on the topic.
The purpose is to explore all sides of a product from a customer perspective or a perspective which is at least different from the one of the management. This can then be used to determine the optimal Marketing Mix.
There are 2 main types of Focus Groups:
- Exploratory Focus Group: used to explore a new issue, to generate hypotheses, especially used in pilot project testing. Compare: Exploratory Factor Analysis.
- Phenomenological Focus Group: try to understand the experiences of the group members; particularly used with groups of consumers, potential customers and opinion leaders.
Additionally, many more Focus Group Types are used such as:
- Two-sided Focus Groups, one group observes the other and reports interactions.
- Dueling Focus Groups, the 2 groups and facilitators take opposite positions regarding the topic. Compare: Six Thinking Hats.
- Mini Focus Group, group is composed of 4 to 5 members rather than 8 to 12.
- Online Focus Group, via the internet.
- Tele-focus Group, by telephone.
Focus groups explicitly make use of group interaction. Alternatives to focus groups include the Delphi Method, Brainstorming, Synectics and De Bono's Six Thinking Hats.
Care must be taken when working with Focus Groups to avoid group conformance and conflict avoidance (Groupthink, Spiral of Silence) and any forms of Cognitive Bias which may lead to poor, incorrect, one-sided or subjective results.
Recent User Comments
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Nicola - Italy
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MaxDiff: Determining what Customers Value Most |
"MaxDiff (Maximum Difference Scaling) is a statistical method created by Jordan Louviere in 1987. Survey respondents (e.g. potential clients) are shown a set of the possible items (preferences) and are asked to indicate the BEST and WORST items (or MOST and LEAST important / appealing. MaxDiff uses a set in which a respondent evaluates four items: A, B, C and D. If the respondent says that A is best and D is worst, these two responses inform us on five of six possible implied paired comparisons:
A > B, A > C, A > D, B > D, C > D
MaxDiff questionnaires are relatively easy for most respondents to understand. Furthermore, humans are better at judging items at extremes than in discriminating among items of middling importance or preference.
MaxDiff is an antidote to standard rating scales or importance scales. Respondents find these ratings scales very easy but they do tend to deliver results which indicate that everything is "quite important", making the data not especially actionable. MaxDiff forces respondents to make choices between options, whilst still, at the end of the day delivering rankings showing the relative importance of the items being rated." |
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- Nigeria
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New Product |
"In the case of a new product of competitive value, how can an exploratory focus group achieve good results?" |
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Samson - Nigeria
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Averaging the Results of a Focus Group |
"Averaging could bring a better quantitative ouput, if a focus group is used. Additionally when the score is unbalanced there will be a clear suspicion that one of the group members did a shalow job, this is not the case if the quantitative is done singularly." |
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Gene - USA
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When NOT to use Focus Groups - Limitations |
"You should not use Focus Groups when quantitative information is needed (when you want to know the percentage of people who will buy a product or vote for some candidate). The small size of focus groups makes any estimates of quantitative proportions unreliable, even if the members of the focus group are representative of the target population.
By the same token, focus group research is a poor choice for multivariate research, where one again needs the stability of large random samples to be ably to disaggregate the effects of explanatory variables through statistical techniques.
Thirdly, focus group research is a poor choice for predicting future action in settings yet to emerge since focus group discussants will articulate their views in terms of their own present experiences." |
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Compare with: Brainstorming | Six Thinking Hats | Delphi Method | SERVQUAL | Marketing Mix | Extended Marketing Mix | Customer Satisfaction Model | Quality Function Deployment
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