Focus Group

Have you ever noticed that some people can better express their opinions when surrounded by others? For example, when Sam asks her brother John for his thoughts on a new restaurant in town, he simply responds with, “It’s fine.” But, when hanging out with friends later that week, Sam directs the same question to the group. This time, John takes the opportunity to voice his opinion, sharing a more detailed admiration for the exceptional service despite finding the overall dining experience less impressive. 

Their other friends join in, sparking a lively discussion. The group dynamic encourages diverse opinions, debates, and agreements. As we can see, engaging in group discussion can bring forth a bunch of insights. This is the same idea behind focus groups, where individuals may feel more comfortable expressing a range of views and fostering new understandings.

Focus groups are group interviews where people share ideas and information for research. During focus groups, an interviewer or researcher will ask questions and often guide the conversation. Participants are encouraged to chat with each other, share stories and react to what others say. The idea is to bring out diverse perspectives and detailed insights.¹

The interesting thing about focus groups is that they help people open up and express their thoughts better than they would in a one-on-one interview. It's especially useful when the questions are open-ended, and researchers are looking for real, in-their-own-words responses. Participants can come up with questions and focus on what matters to them, often taking the research to surprising new places.¹

Focus groups also allow different forms of communication – people make jokes, argue, tell anecdotes, and go back and forth more naturally than in a formal one-on-one interview. As the interviewer or researcher, you get the whole picture of the topic or product you’re asking about. 

However, these meetings are more than a casual discussion, and they aren’t as easy to perform as they seem – they must be methodical. To perform an effective focus group, you should:

1.     Establish your objectives: What do you want to achieve?

2.     Select your participants: they should target your market characteristics (demographics)

3.     Prepare a topic guide: What questions should you ask? How long should the interview last? 

4.     Pick a moderator: They are in charge of it flowing smoothly. They should be skilled at guiding the group to expand upon or move on from a particular question or topic.

5.     Perform the focus group: Select a convenient a comfortable place for the session.

6.     Analyze the data: transcribe and find the common themes and topics throughout the session(s).

7.     Report the findings.²

While more free-form than the traditional interview, the discussion mustn’t drift too far from the main objective of the research. Group facilitators or moderators should be able to let the conversation flow when appropriate, help participants return to the main point of their idea, or even provoke a little bit of debate. The discussion shouldn’t be so open that participants and moderators miss the point altogether, that’s where the “focus” comes in. 

In other words, executing all the above steps could make your market or product research dynamic and truly attentive toward the opinions of users and customers.