Focus Groups are probably the research method with the highest top-of-mind awareness. For many clients I encounter the first thing that comes to mind when they need to conduct market research is Focus Groups.  Focus groups are not right for every research purpose. They should be used for exploration and in-depth understanding, but never to make final decisions.

Focus Groups are more than mere discussions and need a lot of planning if you want to extract any insights out of them. Below are some of the most common mistakes you should avoid when doing Focus Groups (Greenbaun, 1998).

PLANNING

• The research objectives are not clearly defined: Sometimes, due to tight deadlines, clients want to rush Focus Groups without putting time into thinking through what they want to accomplish with the research. Lack of clear objectives often leads to useless results and wasted money and time.

• Disruptive method of communication between the moderator and the clients in the back room: Clients behind the one-way mirror often send notes asking the moderator to probe on a particular question or issue. Sending notes to the moderator creates a set of problems:
  
  
  • The wrong participants are recruited: The quality of Focus Groups depends greatly on the quality of the participants, so clear screening criteria need to be established to avoid:
  • Participants who are not familiar with an issue, product, brand and organization and have little to contribute to the discussion
  • Participants who only have positive feelings about a brand, product or organization. Although  sometimes we want to learn what heavy users and loyal customers want to say, if we don’ have groups we divergent opinions, we won’t  have a point of reference or learn about sources of dissatisfaction and areas in need of improvement

• Groups that are not homogeneous enough in certain variables relevant to the issue which may disrupt the dynamic and course of the discussion (e.g. different educational levels, different socioeconomic levels, gender, age, etc.)

• Not enough time is dedicated to the development of the discussion guide: This should be developed between the client and the moderator and put in writing. It seems obvious, but there are moderators that come to Focus Groups with general ideas of what should be discussed, without any formal discussion guide. Although discussion guides often are modified on the spot depending on the course of the discussion, the moderator has to make sure that the discussion doesn’t take a long detour from the main objectives and that key questions serving those objectives are posed to the group.  It helps to have a formal discussion guide.

• Not enough time is dedicated to the development of adequate stimuli: Often Focus Groups are used to explore reactions to product prototypes, packaging, positioning statements, or ad-like objects (TV commercial, print ad, etc.). Planning is needed to make sure that the stimuli are easily understood and appropriate for the research objectives and different enough to allow us capture different reactions.  The mistake is often to come with not well developed stimuli or with too many of them, resulting in sessions that are not as productive as they could be otherwise.

• Disruptive method of communication between the moderator and the clients in the back room. Clients behind the one-way mirror often send notes asking the moderator to probe on a particular question or issue. Sending notes to the moderator creates a set of problems:
  
  
  • The discussion stops and may make participants lose their train of thought
  • The moderator gets distracted trying to figure out how to incorporate the request in the discussion flow
  • Diminish the moderator’s perceived authority

• Inexperienced moderator: With the increase of DIY research teams at client organizations and smaller budgets, experience sometimes tends to have less weight on the decision about who moderates Focus Groups. This can be disastrous. Experienced moderators use a set of techniques to leverage group dynamics to maximize the positive benefits of interaction among participants and avoid the discussion being dominated by a few voices that can influence others’ reactions to specific questions. Experience in Focus Group moderation can make a difference between successful groups that provide great insights and groups that provide misleading information.

ANALYSIS

• Observers are biased: More often than not, clients come to Focus Groups with pre-conceived ideas and tend to focus on opinions given by participants that confirm what the client already believed to be “true.” There are cases, where the clients totally dismiss what they hear and suddenly become research experts blaming the results on the methodology or the moderator. Clients should be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of Focus Groups and come with an open mind to listen to what ALL participants have to say, not just a few which happen to agree with the client’s point of view. Both the client and the moderator should be as objective as possible if any real insights are to be gained from Focus Groups.

• Results are quantified: More than once I have met clients that want to do several groups and count how many participants express a particular opinion, hoping they can project the results. Results from Focus Groups should not be quantified. It is useless and misleading to quantify results from Focus Groups since they are not projectable. Focus groups are about the big picture and overall feelings (about an issue, brand, ad, etc.) and not individual comments.

The best way to avoid these problems is to plan visits from the moderator to the backroom during the discussion flow, so he or she can discussed with client the intentions of any probing requests. Clients should come to Focus Groups with an open mind and listen to what ALL participants have to say, not just a few which happen to agree with the client’s point of view. Both the client and the moderator should be as objective as possible if any real insights are to be gained from Focus Groups

Focus Groups can provide a lot of insights if done right. Put time into planning, pay for experienced moderators and make sure you use Focus Groups for the right purpose.

As of late I have been receiving many requests to do focus groups. When I ask what the objectives of the research are, and how the information is going to be used, in 99% of the time, doing focus groups is the wrong methodology for what the client wants to accomplish.

In one of the cases, the client wanted to measure advertising effectiveness of a campaign. In another, the client wanted to see how potential customers use some electronic devices with the goal of writing instruction manuals. But the most worrisome case was that of a client wanting to understand the size of the market and who his potential customers were.

Focus groups make sense when the primary goals of the research are to:

• Explore feelings, perceptions and motivations
• Understand why consumers react to a product or advertising message in a certain way
• Provide guidance to a development process (e.g. advertising, packaging, product development)
• Explore issues to form hypotheses when none exist
• Understand the story and why behind the numbers from quantitative studies or key performance metrics (e.g. sales)
• Provide input about issues that should be measured using quantitative research

Focus groups are about exploration and guidance, but don’t give definitive answers. In a recent article about focus groups by Freya Gaertner, she quotes Karen Sandberg who in a Harvard Management Communication Letter writes, “use focus groups not to draw conclusions, but to understand the conclusions drawn.”

Focus groups are not appropriate for:

• Making go/no-go decisions on product, advertising, or promotion launches
• Profiling and sizing target markets
• Measuring marketing effectiveness, awareness and usage

Focus groups have their place in our research toolbox and like any other research method they have advantages and disadvantages, which means they are not a good fit for every research need.

COMMON & APPROPRIATE USES OF FOCUS GROUPS (Greenbaum, 1998)

• New Product Development Studies:  To obtain initial reactions to a new concept or prototype in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and provide guidance on improvements and input for further quantitative and qualitative research.

• Positioning Studies: To explore effective ways to communicate and talk to target consumers about a product, brand or service. However, the final positioning solution should be tested quantitatively.

• Habits and Usage Studies: To collect preliminary data to help understand how consumers utilize products and services before developing a quantitative data collection instrument.

• Packaging Assessments: To identify strengths and weaknesses of various packaging elements during the design stage; to help copywriters to develop the package copy that is most effective, memorable and visible. In more advanced stages of the packaging development, focus groups can be used as a “disaster check” to make sure it is consistent with the brand. Final decision on packaging should then be tested with the help of quantitative research.

• Attitude Studies: To understand how consumers feel about different products and services before or after a quantitative study

• Advertising/Copy Evaluation: To provide input about the potential effectiveness of the advertising based on exposure to rough ideas using storyboards during the creative development stage, and help copywriters understand attitudes towards the advertising during the copy development stage

• Promotion Evaluations: To obtain consumer reactions to promotion concepts so that ideas can be later refined and made more appealing and easier to understand. After a promotional campaign is launched, focus groups can be used to understand why consumers did or did not participate in the promotional program.

• Idea Generation: To identify specific areas where new products – or modifications of existing ones – might offer benefits. As Greenbaum points out, “participants can’t be expected to create new ideas and products. They can talk about the problems they are having and the wishes they would like to fulfilled, but they will not normally be the source of new ideas. These have to come from the client’s or moderator’s interpretation of their comments.”

• Employee Attitude and Motivation Studies: To assess corporate employee’s attitudes towards their organization and identify any problems that should be addressed.

In all the types of research mentioned above, focus groups should be used for exploration and guidance for further research, often quantitative. Never, ever make final decisions on whether to launch a product, select a packaging, go with a positioning concept, or get married to a creative solution for an advertisement or promotion, solely based on focus groups.

I was recently invited to present at the 2011 Mirren New Business Conference, which is a forum for exchange of ideas and training that can help advertising agencies to win new business.

The Mirren Institute has been predicting that the future of advertising agencies will depend on their ability to translate consumer insights into creative solutions that will have an impact on clients’ bottom lines. I couldn’t agree more.

Nonetheless, in a presentation by Andrew Deitchman, the founder of Mother New York, he cited an “unscientific” survey the agency conducted, in which the results indicate that 67% of the agencies and clients rely on gut-feeling and intuition. If this is true, at the exclusion of market research and consumer insights, that’s a sad fact.

Intuition and what is called “gut-feeling” are really products of accumulated experiences that allow individuals to recognize patterns and make decisions without being aware of how they arrived to them. The key word here is experience. For gut-feeling-made decisions to be right in the advertising world, it is required to have in-depth industry and category experience and knowledge of the target market and the client’s business issues. How can we get a real understanding of the target market without market research and customer insights?

More and more clients are asking for the data behind recommended marketing and advertising strategies. Agencies  are likely to increase their odds of winning an account by explaining the rationale, for their proposed advertising campaign, with the help of something more than intuition and gut-feeling. 

Most advertising campaigns have one or more of these goals:

• Inform, position
• Call to action
• Change or reinforce attitudes
• Change or reinforce behaviors

To reach any of these goals, it helps to think as clients think about the purchase cycle for their products/brands. There is always a target market that needs to be aware of our products/brands, consider them, try them and keep buying them.

CONSIDER THE PURCHASE CYCLE

Marketing or advertising campaigns are likely to increase their effectiveness in achieving any of the above mentioned goals if they take into account the different phases of the purchase cycle. For each of these phases, agencies often face questions that can’t be answered with “gut-feeling,” and call for market research and customer insights.

Whether to invest in research to answer questions like these while preparing a pitch it is always a difficult decision for ad agencies since it is hard to justify the cost when it is uncertain they will win the account. Luckily, thanks to technology, there are many new qualitative and quantitative research techniques that can be used to gather rich consumer insights, faster and cheaper than ever.

I urge advertising agencies to give them a try if they want to win a pitch and go beyond gut-feeling or intuition, which are often confused with personal taste and strong biased opinions.

as published on April 1, 2011 by the Dallas Business Journal

For entrepreneurs who are considering investing part of their marketing budget in market research, I have a piece of advice: Think very carefully about how you plan to use the research results in your business decision making.

Although this should be obvious, I meet many business owners who are very interested in doing market research, but have a vague idea of how they will use the resulting data. Then, they get disappointed when they don’t get the data they ultimately need. The solution is to spend time upfront aligning research objectives and business goals. Unfortunately, when market research is a last-minute thought before a big decision, not enough time is spent on clarifying goals and desired outcomes because of very tight deadlines.

In the great scheme of things, businesses are either working to acquire or retain customers or both, for sustainability and profitability purposes. This means that any market research should contribute with insights that support decisions related to customer acquisition and retention strategies. The choice of research methodology is often guided by these two strategies.

Depending on whether customer acquisition or customer retention is the main priority, we have to determine

• The research design and analytical approach we should use to analyze the data.
• The questions that go in a survey or discussion guide in qualitative research techniques (e.g., focus groups).
• The type of people we need to include in the sample.

In a recent conversation with a client wanting to implement a brand tracking study, he asked me who we should include in the study sample: customers or non-customers? I got the same question from another client interested in conducting pricing research before making a decision to change prices.

In both cases my answer was: What is your priority at the moment: acquire or retain customers? If the main goal is customer acquisition, we need to include non-customers in the sample to uncover how receptive they are to our brand and prices and how likely they are to join our customer base. If, on the other hand, our focus is on customer retention, we need to target our customers to take a pulse on our brand and understand their likelihood to defect our brand or buy more of it when faced with price changes.

By aligning business goals with the outcome that can be expected from different research methodologies, entrepreneurs would be able to maximize the return on the investment made in market research and make the research insights actionable.