Market Research Approach
Market research focus groups have been used and refined over the past half-century. It was the market researchers who sought practicality, usefulness, fast turnaround, and economic benefit. They weren't bound intellectually to academics' concerns about contamination and analysis and instead were driven by straightforward economic concerns. Does the information help us produce a better product? Can our business profit from the information obtained?
Let's look at some of the traditions in for-profit market research focus groups.
Market researchers have built the focus group interview into an industry with special focus group facilities, rooms with one-way mirrors, special procedures for recruiting participants, guidelines on the size of focus groups, cash incentives, and professional moderators.
Special focus group rooms with one-way mirrors became standard operating procedure for these commercial, market research focus groups. For a time, some companies had their own rooms, but these weren't helpful when they wanted to listen to consumers in another part of the country. Soon, special focus group facilities appeared in major cities around the country. Typically, these facilities offer several rooms with one-way mirrors and audio- and videotaping options, professional screening and recruiting services to locate focus group participants, meeting rooms for clients to use, and catering services for the clients and participants.
The viewing rooms allow the sponsors of the research and others (advertising team, marketing staff, engineers, product developers, etc.) to observe consumers talking about the product. This firsthand observation is highly instructive for executives, who are often unfamiliar with the day-by-day realities of ordinary consumers. Watching the groups allows the sponsor to see the product through the eyes of the customer. Moreover, it provides new ideas for creative designers as they develop new products and services.
Most market research groups were and still are conducted with white, middle-class, suburban and urban residents because typically, the goal is to learn how to sell more of a product or service. As a result, the focus groups were conducted with people who had disposable income. In recent years, marketers have begun seeking out greater diversity in race and age, provided, of course, that they are a target market for the product or service.
Recruiting participants is big business for these facilities. Recruiters phone people, screen them, and invite them to the groups. Participants are offered money as an incentive to show up. The harder the type of person is to find, the more they are paid to show up. Some market researchers are very concerned about how often people participate in focus groups. Some participants enjoy the opportunity to talk, listen to others, and get paid and make an effort to get into groups. They have been labeled focus groupies. Market researchers fear that repeat participants will alter the results of focus group research. So nationwide screening services have been developed to discover if a particular potential participant has been in a focus group in the past few months. This concern is unique to commercial market research focus groups.
Group size was set at ten to twelve participants. This appears to be based on the field experiences of moderators. It may have been that moderators found that a portion of participants were often reluctant to talk, sometimes as many as 30%, and if you invited a dozen people, you would almost always have enough "talkers" to provide information. In addition, moderators found that groups of more than twelve were harder to manage, tended to fragment into smaller conversations, and did not yield proportionally more insights. Some researchers even recruit fifteen people and select ten to twelve to participate. The others are given the incentive for showing up and sent on their way.
Businesses hire professional focus group moderators to conduct their studies. There is a network of these people throughout the country. People learn to be market research moderators by taking classes and by being an apprentice to a master moderator. Some firms have aspiring moderators observe and assist for several years before they moderate a group. They receive practical experience and coaching. (This is the only time assistant researchers are used in commercial focus groups because it is an added expense. They sit behind the one-way mirror, take notes, and may be responsible for writing a first draft of a report.)
Speedy results are essential in market research groups. Professional market researcher moderators complain that clients want final reports within days of the last focus group. They do not have time to do elaborate analysis based on transcripts. Reports are considered proprietary information and are rarely available to the public.
BACKGROUND
If you would like to read more about focus groups using a market research approach, you might consider the following:
Goldman, A. E,, & McDonald, S. S. (1987). The group depth interview. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Greenbaum, T. L (1998). The handbook for focus group research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.