Focus group is an important form of qualitative marketing research that is used to gather main

data regarding opinions, feelings, attitudes and impressions of a specific target population on a certain
subject.
Usually, a focus group consists in a small, representative group of people invited to share their
perceptions, thoughts, beliefs and ideas towards a product, service, notion, commercial, idea, or
encasement.
Participants are free to talk, support their opinions and reason their choices.
Basically, focus groups are interviews with more people at the same time. There is an objective
moderator also called facilitator who encourages the participants to give feedback or comment.
Focus groups can be organized as a debate where participants choose sides and duel the subject
in discussion. There can also be formed mini focus groups with less than 10 persons, usually 5-6.
The facilitator can be chosen from the participants, or there can be two of them, taking care that
the discussion does not run out of course. Though traditional focus groups are held in person, there can
also be telephone or online focus groups.

Benefits of focus groups

There are many advantages of this method , including :

• They are quick, easy, cheaper than other marketing research methods. Focus groups are to be
between 30 minutes and 1 hour and there is plenty of time to get valuable information. They are
not costly, there are more labor or time resources invested in organizing the group and
analyzing the data than financial means involved.
• They allow you direct contact with the target market. You receive their ideas, attitudes, feelings,
needs, and impressions first-hand. You get a closer view of their values, principles and reasons
for their choices. You gain insight into the obstacles customers meet when considering buying
your product/service. You gain a deeper understanding of how the participants perceive you.
• Participants' opinions represent essential information that could provide you ideas for change.
Understanding what people don't like about your product or service, or the drawbacks from
buying them, you know what should be improved and how. Customers are always valuable
resources when it comes to advertising. They have effective ideas of how to market your
product or service because they know what they want to hear or see in order to be persuaded.
• The group effect produces data and insights that are not accessible in a 1-on-1 interview.
Listening to other participants' verbalized experiences provokes memories, ideas, and
experiences hard to recollect without interaction found in a group. They build on one another's
responses and come up with ideas they might not have thought of .Participants can act as checks
and balances on one another – validating others or discovering existent errors or extreme
perspectives.
• Participants express in their own words, and build a common language to describe similar
experiences. That might help you speak in the language of your target market the next
advertising campaign.
• Focus groups provide information to the company conducting it but as well to the participants,
that will walk away from the interaction with more information about the company and
products and are likely to become loyal customers, referrals or partners. This establishes
relationships, builds goodwill and increase brand's awareness.

Limitations in of focus groups

There are a couple of drawbacks in conducting a focus group:

 • Because of the relatively small number of respondents, focus groups are not statistically valid.
The subjective approach, implies that the focus group is not well-grounded for understanding of
larger samples' attitudes . They may bring out a great amount of information about what a
particular “public” wants, but don't unveil specific data like the number of people of a particular
group who share those preferences or features.
• Focus groups require a proficient and experienced moderator. The facilitator has less control
over a group than a one-on-one interview. If the moderator doesn't monitor and guide the
discussion , a lot of time can be lost on issues irrelevant to the topic.
• The data resulted from a focus group is tough to analyze. The answers are not as standardized
as in a poll, and regard not just the spoken language, but the body language too. All data
requires skill and experience to analyze.
• The results depend on the observer .The answers obtained are affected by the researcher, him
being the one formulating the question, guiding the discussion, selecting the respondents, all
these raising questions of validity. Facilitator's attitude and the environment also influence the
answers obtained from respondents. They can be tempted to please the facilitator rather than
offer their own evaluations and ideas, and make the focus group totally useless.
• The results can also be influence by a few dominant group members that take over the session
and affect responses of all other participants so the answers of each participant are not
independent anymore . Another issue is that the responses are not anonymous, and some
participants may feel embarrassed to express their opinions because of the presence of other
people.

Following, there are some tips for a successful focus group. Conducting a focus group requires
preparation before the actual event, a lot of monitoring and guiding during the meeting and skills and
experience in analyzing the results and make the most out of them for the success of the company.

Preparing the focus group

1. Define the objectives. A specific purpose in mind is crucial to focusing on the most important
information, gathering the most relevant audience to the discussion and creating a useful
discussion plan. The purpose has to be clear and specific so that the rest of the process goes
much easier.
2. Determine the best participants, develop a list of features the respondents should meet, create a
list of possible participants, recruit them. Send them letters of invitation and call for
confirmation a couple of days before the focus group. Make sure you invite twice more people
than you expect to come. Respondents should be a relevant audience for the problem to be
discussed. Don’t mix target markets, focus groups should be as homogeneous as possible.
3. Select a location and times for the focus groups. The times should be convenient for the
participants. Try to consider lunch break, early morning or late afternoons. As a location, choose
a comfortable, quiet room,without distractions, where people can be placed around a table so
that all can view each other. Make sure that the environment encourages conversation and
doesn't suggest too much to the respondents about the issue in discussion.
4. Select a moderator and recorder staff. The meeting should be facilitated by someone not
directly involved in the program. This person should be able to deal with a group of people, to
keep the discussion on track, encourage all the participants to express their opinions. Consider
recording the meeting in writing and , if possible, audio-video. The recorder staff should note
every comment, every attitude and every gesture. All these are very important in analyzing
respondents' answers.
 5. Develop a discussion guide. This should point the main elements during the meeting, the
introduction, presentation of the company and the issue discussed, the questions, and after the
free discussion, the conclusion and ending. This represents only guidelines for the facilitator,
who has the freedom to conduct the meeting according to his experience and intuition, rather
than a script.
6. Formulate the questions you plan to ask. Based on the information you need to gather about
the project, program, product, develop a number of questions to ask the participants. You can
use questions from a previous questionnaire, providing that the respondents are allowed to
reason their choices this time. Make sure all the questions are open-ended and neutral. Begin
with more general questions, concerning well-known issues and then proceed to more specific
ones.

During the focus group

1. Schedule the meeting so that it doesn't take more than 30 minutes to one hour. This should be
enough for introduction, questions and wrap up. And make sure you stick to the schedule.
2. Arrangement details. Make sure the conference room used is easily accessible and there is
signage to direct participants there. Make all the efforts for better accommodation. Provide
name tags, pens and paper, refreshments.
3. Agenda. Start the meeting by welcoming everyone and presenting the organization in brief.
Explain the purpose of the focus group and underline the fact that you count on their sincere,
open, personal opinions. Explain that each respondent will be given an opportunity to answer
to a series of questions. Start by asking the general questions and then go to specific issues.
Give everyone the chance to talk. Finally, draw a conclusion wrapping up all their answers and
thank everyone for attending the meeting.
4. Guide the questions towards issues concerning your company's perception among consumers,
the efficiency of your marketing strategy, their ideas about improving your activity. Ask
questions about their habits and behavior, values and standards, their opinion abut pricing, and
barriers to accessing your products. Note positive as well as negative feedback from
respondents, and be aware of the language used. It might reach to the target market better than
anything else.
5. The moderator must focus on collecting information so that the purpose of the meeting is met.
He should make sure all answers and comments are in context, encourage the participants to
give feedback, even the quite ones. He should keep the discussion on track and don't exceed the
time limit. The proper attitude is objective, so that the participants feel comfortable sharing
their opinions. He should keep a distant position from all the arguments, not presenting
advantages or disadvantages as facts, but as simple information. Doing so, participants will be
more sincere in their critiques when reviewing an impersonal issue. The facilitator should
manage carefully all disagreements and cast all the information in a positive light. At the end of
the session, all the participants should be made aware of the importance of their contribution.
6. Record every response. Have the moderator writing down important ideas on flip-charts, as
well as the note-taking staff who should notice all talking , movement, gestures or attitudes to
be analyzed later.

After the focus group

1. Make any additional notes on your already written notes, flip-chart in order to clarify any
misunderstanding or abbreviation. Capture fresh impressions right after the meeting by
reviewing it with another person and writing a summary.
2. Analyzing what you learned. Study the summary and notice possible trends, ideas, complaints.
Also review the tone and the context and exclude any emotional response, focus on the honest,
 real answers.
3. Write a report. For better results, put in order what was said and condense the information.
Note any relevant information about the focus group, its background and purpose, people who
attended, the subject, the way the discussion evolved, any surprises during the session and any
other comment worth attention. Note the general trend of the discussion and the main theme.
Draw conclusions and use the findings in shaping the next steps to success by putting them in
practice.
4. In trying to put the results into practice you should schedule a meeting to discuss and review
the report and analyze the implications of the information achieved. Compare and combine
them with other researches' results (surveys, polls, interviews). Emphasize the main trends and
themes as well as issues and problems that occurred during the focus group. Transform all the
information into actions to be taken. Take advantage of all the resources the focus group
provided.

This method can be used to evaluate customers' opinions about products and services or test
new ideas on potential target markets.
Compared to usual questionnaires who use standard questions and gather pure statistical data,
focus groups gain in-depth sense of how people think due to open-ended interrogations that figure out
not only the answer people choose but the reason why they choose it.