Organising focus groups is an easy way to gather qualitative information to better understand the needs, attitudes or expectations of consumers and users of your target audience. With a focus group you can get much more in-depth information, and the group interaction will allow you to see how the discussion is shaped to reach conclusions.
Today we tell you everything you need to know about focus groups and how to set them up step by step to get the information you need.
What is a focus group?
A focus group is a qualitative research technique used to conduct market research. It consists of creating a group that discusses a topic for a set amount of time around a table or online. A facilitator moderates and guides the conversation to explore the ideas and experiences of the participants. The focus group allows in-depth information to be obtained about the perceptions, opinions, attitudes, and behaviours of a group of people in relation to any topic. Unlike in-depth interviews, focus groups allow for group interaction that shapes the findings.
When to do focus groups?
The key to deciding to do focus groups is that you want to get much more detailed and nuanced information than you can get from a survey. In general, surveys are very good for getting numerical data on what people do or think, but it is difficult to ask them to answer long questionnaires or to do complex thinking. Surveys are also not the best methodology when you want to cover issues where nuances are very important or when dealing with sensitive topics. Therefore, in any of these cases we need qualitative research that goes further, and focus groups are a very good option to achieve this.
A common idea among many researchers is that the ideal is to do exploratory qualitative research first, for example through focus groups, and then do quantitative research through surveys to quantify the insights discovered. This is ideal, but there is nothing to stop you doing it the other way around when necessary. If you have conducted a survey and are seeing unexpected or hard-to-understand data, you can dig deeper into that particular aspect through focus groups. Don’t be left wondering about anything that might make a difference to your company’s bottom line.
With regard to the subject matter of the studies, a wide range can be addressed with focus groups.
Understanding a market: Whenever you create a new brand or extend an existing one into a new category or a new market, you may not know essential aspects. This is why it is important to explore how consumers perceive and use the category and brands, so you can understand the fundamental data on which to base your expansion strategy and marketing plan.
Product development: A very common use case where focus groups are often used concerns the screening of initial ideas for innovation processes. With a few groups that have a certain representativeness we can not only evaluate the different options that are proposed, but also obtain very rich information to shape the concepts and re-evaluate them this time with quantitative techniques.
General attitudes and opinions: Brands often need background information on what consumers think about different issues and how that impacts the category or product. For example, brands need to understand what their consumers think is important in the area of sustainability. This ensures that the brand is focusing on the most important ones. Another example may have to do with the relationship between health and food. And there are many others.
Communication and advertising: In this case focus groups are used to test ideas for advertising campaigns, messages, or creative elements and see how they will resonate with the target audience. With the current fragmentation of media, there is a whole initial phase where creative paths or claims can be analysed before being translated into concrete executions for each medium. Once they have been validated by consumers, brands can invest in creating animatics or final versions and retest them with quantitative tools to prioritise and improve them before launch.
As you can see, there are many use cases for focus groups and I’m sure this list can be completed with many other examples.
Benefits and limitations of focus groups
Like all research methodologies, focus groups have pros and cons that you will need to weigh up when choosing to use them to meet a research need.
Benefits of focus groups
Focus groups are the ideal tool to understand a reality in detail and provide deep insights, as they allow you to explore in depth the opinions and feelings of the participants, something that cannot be captured through quantitative surveys. Therefore, at times when exploratory research is needed, they are a trump card.
In addition, focus groups provide a more enriching interaction than other qualitative techniques, such as in-depth interviews. Group dynamics can stimulate new ideas or insights that would not emerge in a one-on-one conversation.
Limitations of focus groups
Like all qualitative research techniques, focus groups help to better understand a reality, but they do not allow for precise quantification of the relative importance of each aspect. For this reason, they are often combined with surveys.
In terms of cost, organising a focus group is within the reach of any company, but conducting many focus groups will require a budget. Much of the cost of focus groups has to do with moderation and incentivisation of participants, where there are virtually no economies of scale. This is another reason for combining them with surveys, where there are economies of scale, and it is more efficient to look for differences in consumer profiles.
Finally, detractors also criticise the fact that the moderator may introduce bias, as he or she may tend to seek confirmation of his or her own ideas.
Online vs. face-to-face focus groups How to choose?
One of the most important decisions to make when organising a focus group is whether it will be held in a physical location or whether participants will connect via the internet. Generally, face-to-face focus groups are held in purpose-built rooms in large cities. They usually have large tables around which participants gather, and observers can follow the groups comfortably behind mirrored walls.
Online focus groups, on the other hand, are organised using software that allows the focus group to be conducted in much the same way as it would take place in person. Online focus groups have gained traction in market research and their growth accelerated rapidly during the COVID-19 confinement. Once the pandemic subsided, many of the focus groups continued to be conducted online.
Advantages of organising a face-to-face focus group
When participants are in a room for qualitative studies, they have direct contact and members interact with each other. This makes it easier to collect not only the answers they express aloud, but also a lot of information that emerges from their non-verbal communication and enriches the findings. In addition, if as part of the session you wish to introduce a dynamic – for example, interacting with a product package – it is easier to organise.
Advantages of holding an online focus group
Conducting online focus groups has many advantages in terms of efficiency and convenience:
There is no need to rent rooms. As the whole process takes place over the Internet, it is not necessary to hire a room in each place where you want to organise a discussion group, with the significant savings that this entails.
Participants do not have to travel. Participants can do it from the comfort of their own home. The technology ensures that they can interact with each other in much the same way, and being in their own environment gives them security, privacy and comfort, and psychologically they feel freer to express their opinions.
Greater geographical spread can be counted on. Bringing people from outside the big cities to participate in focus groups is difficult, expensive and rarely happens in practice. But with online discussion groups, all these geographical barriers are eliminated.
Convenience for observers: possibilities to connect from different locations to view the dynamics live.
Speed. By eliminating the need to hire rooms and travel that can take days to schedule, it is possible to get into the field much more quickly and have the conclusions in record time.
Technology. By conducting focus groups through a specialised platform, a transcript of the sessions can be obtained immediately. And artificial intelligence can create summaries to facilitate the moderator’s analysis and deliver the results even faster.
Without room, travel and subsistence costs, it is much more competitive in terms of cost and speed to hold online focus groups, and it is also more convenient for participants, moderators and observers. These reasons are at the heart of the rapid growth of online focus groups in most markets.
How to organise a focus group step-by-step?
Once you have defined your research objectives precisely and have opted for focus groups, it is time to set them up. We take a step-by-step look at everything you need to run your own focus groups.
Research rooms or platform. If you opt for face-to-face focus groups you will need to hire qualitative research rooms in all the cities where you are going to carry out your research. If you are opting for online focus groups, you will need to equip yourself with access to the platform of your choice. Remember that a specialised research platform will allow you many more possibilities, such as the ability to have observers, transcripts and summaries of the sessions.
Participants. Generally, a focus group is composed of between 8 and 12 people. This size allows for sufficient interaction without it becoming unwieldy. If you are going online, a consumer panel gives you easy access to consumers with the exact characteristics you need.
Moderator. Your role is to guide the conversation, ensure that all participants have a chance to speak, and keep the focus on the topics of interest. You can act as moderator yourself if you have experience. Or, if you prefer, choose to have an experienced moderator facilitate the discussion while you observe the groups live.
Moderation guideline. Whether you manage the groups yourself or have moderators, you will need a moderation guideline. This is a set of guidelines or a script that the moderator uses to conduct the session effectively. These guidelines help ensure that the discussion stays focused, that all important topics are covered, and that the objective of the study is achieved. It also includes guidelines on what to do when unexpected interesting topics come up that require flexibility in applying the guideline.
Once you have everything you need, you can go to the field. If you do not moderate them, we recommend that you attend as an observer anyway, as it will help you to start forming your ideas. And if you do moderate them, remember that nowadays technology allows you to get video recordings, transcripts, and summaries of the sessions to facilitate the analysis and you can bring the conclusions to all stakeholders in record time.
Online discussion groups with We are testers
At We are testers we have everything you need to get your focus groups up and running. We have a specialised research platform that includes all the functionalities to make your online focus groups easy. And among the 130,000 members of our panel of consumers and users you will find the profiles you need for your groups. These participants have voluntarily signed up to participate in market research and are ready to bring full value to your research. Finally, we have a network of specialised focus group moderators to support you whenever you need it.
Ready to start your own focus groups. Contact our experts to help you get there.
Update date 20 August, 2024
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