Concept Testing Using Focus Groups

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Concept Testing Using Focus Groups
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Focus Groups

• Offer
• An in-depth understanding of your targets
  perspectives or opinions in greater detail than
  can be attained through other methods

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Misuses of Focus Groups ...

• Using in the place of a larger scale quantitative
  study
• Assuming responses are representative,
  quantifiable, and projectable
• To prove a preconceived conclusion
• To select a winner among new product ideas or
  concepts
• As a final step in decision making instead of a
  first exploratory step
• As sales presentations

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Important Points to Remember

• Focus group results are not projectable
• More groups does not a quantitative study make
• Used appropriately, they can be very useful
• Objectivity of both observers and moderator is a
  must

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Steps in Conducting a Focus Group Project

• Determine the objective
• Outline the study design
• Recruit qualified participants
• Conduct the groups
• Analyze and report the findings

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Determine Objectives

• Clarify background
• Identify purpose of the study
• Identify use of findings and results
• Identify topics to be covered
• Limit subject to get depth rather than breadth

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Study Design

• Number of groups group size
• Group population characteristics
• Geographic location timing
• Stimulus materials
• Choose the incentive
• Facilities
• Moderator

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Recruiting Qualified Participants

• Basic segmentation criteria
• Desired respondent characteristics
• Industry qualifiers screens
• Sample source
• Recruiting procedures
• Reminder and re-screening procedures

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Conducting the Focus Groups

• Seating
• Facilitating involvement
• Moderator attributes outline
• Backroom etiquette
• Verbal debrief

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Questioning Techniques

• Straightforward questioning
• Exercises
• Cards
• Computer
• Written
• Projective techniques

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Analysis Reporting

• Objectivity, patterns
• Reporting options
• Debriefing
• Topline summary
• Full report
• Audio recordings transcriptions
• Video recordings

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Focus Group Costs

• Recruitment of participants
• Rental of focus group facility
• Moderator fees - design, moderating, debrief
• Reporting
• Respondent incentives
• Incidental costs - food, audio video recording,
  travel

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• "The most important word in the vocabulary of
  advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product
  with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you
  will do well in the marketplace."
• - David Ogilvy (1963), quoted in Stephen Donadio,
  The New York Public Library Book of
  Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New
  York Stonesong Press, p. 70.