Are we missing the point of focus groups?
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Why we should consider the profile of research participants in a more positive light.
It’s one of those topics that always comes up, whether it’s in the media, at market research conferences or just when discussing a brief and what the best methodology is. The humble focus group. Does it still have a place in marketing arsenal? Is the set up and design ‘leading’ people? Are there better and more reliable ways to explore feelings/behaviours/reactions/insert objective here? Are the people truly representative? Are we killing good creatives by ‘focus grouping’ them?
I started writing this bog post in response to the twitter storm that reared its head last week to weigh in as I’m a fan of the focus group.
But then I decided enough people had done that already – and people with much louder voices than I have – and having read all their arguments, I couldn’t help but agreeing with ALL of them. The long and short of it is that focus groups, like any methodology, have a time and place. They’re appropriate for some questions but not all. They’re amazing at some stages of the marketing process but less so in others.
What I’d like to briefly discuss instead are the people as this is something I hear about a lot. Well-meaning clients question whether the sort of person who attends a focus group is representative of their target audience. They undermine these attendees by saying that not everyone is this savvy. They argue that attendees to focus groups are more vocal, opinionated, outgoing, extroverted…
And then with this reasoning they disagree when participants are negative about a preferred creative route or pack design.
So what we’re saying is that the loud, mouthy, opinionated participants who are way more savvy than the average consumer are probably not the target audience and therefore we can’t trust their opinion. And therefore the focus group is not a good place for research.
Well, I disagree. There are a couple of things I know for certain.
First, introverted and shy participants do exist. Ironically most clients don’t like them as they don’t seem to have much to say but a good moderator will help coax them out of their shell. They can be brilliant at offering up opposing opinions to the loud ones in the group, sparking an indepth discussion and creating a space for others to say, ‘actually, that’s a good point, I agree.’
Secondly, people of all types – extroverted and introverted – love to give an opinion. This isn’t only in a focus group setting. It’s in all settings: this is the basis of conversation. In focus groups we need to be cognizant of this and allow someone the space to navigate their way to their true opinion, rather than battering them with questions. You need to be patient as opinions may appear to contradict at first because that’s how our human brains work: until we’ve had time to sit down and really consider something, our brains jump around. We will eventually get there, though.
Thirdly, power of the crowd is a true and real phenomenon. As teens we may have been told we were buckling under peer pressure. But even as adults we can’t help but take in others’ opinions to inform our own. In most settings, we subconsciously look to the leader or most influential or informed person. By listening to those opinionated and mouthy participants in focus groups, we can start to understand what influencers are thinking and use that to our marketing advantage. Of course, a good moderator needs to balance that with allowing the whole group to speak.
To answer the question whether focus groups participants are unrepresentative, I would say focus groups are settings where we’re encouraging people to give their opinion, so give them free rein to give their opinion and don’t question what they say just because they did exactly what you asked them to do.
