TakeAway: Arguing that focus groups were never really all that effective in the first place, agencies and research facilities have introduced a variety of methods aimed at shaking up the traditional focus group approach.
Young & Laramore, an Indianapolis-based agency, frequently runs what the company president calls “friendship groups.”
That’s when the company will tap one consumer and ask that individual to recruit two or three others from his/her social circle. The assumption is that one is more likely to be comfortable in an experimental setting when with others in one’s social network.
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Excerpted from Forbes, “From Focus Groups to ‘Friend’ Groups” By Elaine Wong, November 19, 2010
In these situations, researchers can tell when participants are sharing “secrets with each other, you can catch them winking their eyes or exchanging signals with each other, and you dig into that and find out what’s up.”
Contrast that with the conventional focus group model, in which the scenario in question usually runs something like this: A packaged goods company, retailer or marketer, let’s say, asks an agency or research partner to recruit a panel of consumers with whom to test new products, packaging or ideas. These groups, which can range anywhere from six to 12 or more in number, then gather in a “sterile” room, as many agency execs describe it. A moderator then runs through a list of questions and records participants’ responses while researchers in the back room watch. Such procedures are routine, boring, not to mention long—one session can last 90 minutes—and yield few, if any, new insights.
One catalyst driving the push is the proliferation of social media mining tools, which allow companies to test and tweak new go-to-market strategies in real time and without the need for an actual focus group.
To avoid the typical, ho-hum answers, one company, The New England Consulting Group, uses a methodology called Super Groups, which involves finding the extreme, “lunatic fringes” of a consumer set. Talking to those who are not your average consumer ensures that you get not-so-average—and in some cases, off the chart—results. Several agency executives also brought up the idea of “conflict groups,” when “you recruit and mix people who love something [with] others who hate it or [bring together] passionate lovers of two different brands,” explains an Arnold executive.
Efficiency aside, the historical focus group also posed other problems. One is the gap between what people think and how they later act. Consumers may rationalize their shopping or buying behaviors, but emotion, rather than reason, is often a big driver of these decisions.
Edit by AMW
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Full Article:
http://blogs.forbes.com/elainewong/2010/11/19/from-focus-groups-to-friend-groups/
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