Focus groups for Research

Focus group in RESEARCH 3.0



The rapidly evolving consumer market and globalization has produced newer challenges for product managers and marketing experts and one of these is market research to ensure that the right product is reaching the right market or in Dr.Philip Kotler’s words, “value is being delivered to the target market leading to profit.” In this scenario, the comment echoes the frustration of a marketer who assumes that product managers will only apply one single- step research methodology. However, if we were to look for an answer to research challenges, Simon Chadwick’s insight on Research 3.0 where primary research is surrounded by other types of data gathering is quite reassuring. He favours a broader and holistic approach to research projects than one single survey or focus group.

Focus group is an important part of any research method mix. David L Morgan explains Focus groups as the "explicit use of group interaction to produce data and insights that would be less accessible without the interaction found in a group.” He further endorses that Focus groups have the advantage of being used both as a primary and supplementary source of data collection, validation or deeper drilling in any mix of research methods being used.

For example, once product managers receive data from a primary research, they can conduct focus groups in order to refine information on particular topics as individual focus groups can be drawn from specific populations. Focus group helps collect more thoughts, ideas and experiences as group interactions tend to be more creative than individual interactions. Also, Focus group can be used as an exploratory approach to gather data before large surveys or sampling is commissioned. In the end, I will reinforce the importance of Focus groups as an important step in the research process because of its sheer flexibility that allows generating ideas, concepts or research hypothesis, diagnosing problems, evolving research terminology, instrument pre-testing, interpreting experimental results, drilling into comparative insights of existing data, to name a few. It depends on the product manager’s innovative intelligence to utilize the strength of Focus groups in eliciting the data required whether as a part or a self-contained research method.