Using a focus group: to the uninitiated, it may seem like the locus of a lot of hocus-pocus. But experienced marketers revere it as a valuable research technique.

• Author: Kennedy, Samantha A.
• Position: Fundamentals

Focus groups are ideally suited to probe the dynamics that drive consumer behavior. When these groups are well conceived--when they have good sample selection and discussion content and flow, and they are moderated and analyzed by qualitative research professionals--the results convert "mere information" into the subtle understandings and insights that are crucial to the development of effective marketing strategies. The best part about these strategies is that they are rooted in the market's own perspectives.

An important secondary advantage of focus groups is the opportunity for first-hand observation of customers. This can be a revealing (and sometimes sobering) experience for managers who are ordinarily immersed in the day-to-day routine of their jobs, far removed from customer contact.

Focus groups are used widely but not always wisely. Appropriate uses include:

* For exploratory purposes: understanding the "why" and "how" of past, present and likely future market behavior.

* For diagnostic purposes: identifying market segments and their respective problems, wants and susceptibilities.

* For developmental purposes: generating hypotheses, formulating product/service/communications concepts.

* For "soft" testing of concepts.

Focus groups should not be used for "hard count" testing, auditing, tracking, checking or forecasting--or for quantitative projections of any sort. (However, although they cannot be projected statistically, focus-group results often ran be validly predictive.)

Although the popularity of focus groups waxes and wanes, as a seemingly endless stream of new methodologies comes into :and often goes out of) fashion, focus groups remain a classic research mode that serves many purposes well. In recent years they have been enjoying a resurgence of interest on the part of marketers, largely as result of two important developments:

1. A "backlash" reaction to a broad movement in business toward the rapid generation of enormous amounts of quantitative descriptive data.

   Although this "numbers" orientation dates back some time, it has been refueled by technological advances such as instantaneous transaction and other real-time measurement/control systems, as well as market research in which consumers responses are entered directly into computers. Even as these new technologies feed managers' hunger for reliable quantitative information quickly (in some cases, almost immediately), it removes them further from understanding their...