Focus Groups
Why use focus groups?
- Gain information on how groups of stakeholders think and feel about your services or brand—all in their own words.
- Explore the background context behind what people think and feel to “walk in their shoes.”
- Test marketing concepts or new service offerings before rollout.
- Uncover hidden issues affecting stakeholder satisfaction.
- Check your assumptions about how people respond to messages or products in your industry.
- Identify new services, refine developing products, or tap new markets by brainstorming with your constituents.
- Pre-test messaging or products concepts.
- Gather stakeholder-generated language, concepts, and questions that can help build effective quantitative surveys.
Common questions about focus groups:
- How many focus groups should we have?
- How many participants should we include in each group?
- How do we recruit for focus groups?
- Who should we recruit?
- What questions should we ask to gain the insights we need?
- How should those questions be phrased?
- What if the people we’d like to learn from are geographically diverse?
- How should we handle any existing privacy concerns?
- Should we reveal our brand as sponsoring the study, or should we keep the sponsorship anonymous?
- Could our questions be addressed more effectively with in-depth interviews compared to focus group discussions?
How we can help:
We can guide you throughout the planning process, implement objective data collection, make recommendations based on the data collected, and consult with you on implementing action steps. Percept Research consultants provide:
Planning
- Needs assessment to define clear research goals.
- Research design aimed toward gathering specific, relevant, and attainable data.
- Recruitment consulting to define sample populations and identify qualified participants.
- Discussion guide development to stimulate conversation while collecting specific, relevant input.
Research implementation
- Objective group moderation to eliminate bias, and ensure all viewpoints are heard and registered.
- Interpersonal skills that create a neutral, relaxed, conversational atmosphere that encourages participants to speak freely.
- Group dynamics management so the group is not dominated by any one person’s input or opinion.
- Discussion generation and management that encourages interactions among various role-players (e.g., innovators, early adopters, laggards, etc.) to learn how they may influence one another.
Reporting
- Data integration with secondary resources to frame participants’ comments specifically within the context of your program and industry.
- Data analysis, interpretation, and presentation that speaks directly to your program objectives.
Consulting
- Actionable recommendations based on data collected.
- Guidance on action items implementation and best practices.
