Focus groups are a waste of time and money
While focus groups are the 'sacred cow' of market research, do they really achieve what they set out to? Agents of Spring's Evette Cordy argues that relying on verbal conversations in an artificial environment, often observed behind a two-way mirror, is like "trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only 25% of the pieces".
Focus groups are the sacred cow of qualitative market research. They’re fast, cheap and easy to organise. But are they good value? And do they deliver what’s required? I’ve moderated hundreds of focus groups in Australia and overseas over the past two decades, and I believe they come with several, fundamental limitations. So while companies spent approximately $70m on focus groups in Australia in 2017, it might be time to kill this sacred cow.
Artificial environments
Most traditional focus groups treat people like the latest zoo attraction – observed around a table in front of a discretely located camera, or through a two-way mirror. On the other side of the mirror are comfier chairs, and no doubt tastier snacks and drinks, where observers convey a sense of control.
But how are we expected to understand customers’ needs and motivations in this kind of environment?
As Small Data author Martin Lindstrom reflected: “If you want to study animals, don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle.”
Shouldn’t we treat our customers more like humans than zoo animals?
Time constraints
Focus group participants are expected to share opinions in front of strangers in a moderated, time-bound environment. At best, in a 90-minute focus group with six to eight participants, each person will get to share their views for approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
This is nowhere near enough time to explore deeper needs and motivations. It only allows for a tiny and shallow snapshot into an individual’s world.
Exploratory work requires more in-depth investigation.
Conformity bias
Most focus group participants suffer from social influence or conformity bias – a tendency to act or think like others around you. Some lie because they want to appear socially desirable or acceptable, or perhaps because they are embarrassed. Have you ever observed a focus group where someone is dominating the conversation, and others start agreeing with their views, perceptions, or attitudes?
In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch first demonstrated such conformity by asking participants to guess the measurement of a line. Each participant was surrounded by a group of ‘actors’ who intentionally said the wrong answer, and 76% of the time, they provided an incorrect answer just to fit in.
All talk
Traditional focus groups lack context and rely on attitudes, opinions or self-reported behaviour mostly conveyed via one mode of feedback – a verbal conversation. This is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with only 25% of the pieces.
Focus groups rely on participants relaying exactly what they think and how they would behave, but we know people don’t always walk their talk. While some start with the right intentions, this doesn’t always translate into matching behaviours. For example, have you ever told someone you are going to drink less alcohol and more water for a month? What was the result? How did your actions differ from your intentions?
In my experience, organisations often jump too quickly into solving what they believe their customers’ problems to be, based on what customers have told them, instead of observing the real issues.
In many cases, people are unaware of their own behaviour. You can’t always rely on what you hear from behind focus group mirrors. The most profound insights I have unearthed have been through ethnographic fieldwork where observation is coupled with a conversation. Our most valuable problems to solve are often discovered by spending time with customers in their natural environment to understand their hopes, fears and values, and noticing what delights them and what their pain points are. You need to curiously observe what customers say, as well as what they do, so you can truly understand what matters to them.
You may be thinking that focus group alternatives are going to be both time-consuming and expensive. But they don’t have to be. More importantly, isn’t it more costly to take your new product or service to market based on a shallow insight – risking company resources and increasing the likelihood of failure?
It’s time to innovate and stop wasting money on a pillar of market research that has outlived its usefulness.
Evette Cordy is a registered psychologist and the chief investigator and co-founder of Agents of Spring
Pretty much. The comment about social conformity is an interesting one, particularly in a time when expressing certain opinions and attitudes comes with a social cost. For example, if a participant genuinely holds racist views they not likely to express them in a focus group….but meet them at the Reclaim Australia rally and…
That’s obviously an extreme example but there a moderate but “unpopular” views that people aren’t going to express.
Add to that, I suspect that the same general problem exists here as in many surveys. Anyone with the time to participate….may not be very reflective of the general population.
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Well, lookie here pardners, looks like someone with something to sell wants a slice a that sweet sweet sacred cow $70m. There’s room in this town for all us snake-oil salesfolk, just ask the ones spruiking neuro.
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@ Doc Holliday it does rather look like someone trying to look like they have discovered something that’s been around for a very long time. Of course focus groups aren’t the solution to every problem. Different problems , different solutions. Good researchers know which technique to use. Good moderators know how to deal with the points she raises, and good strategists know that research can only ever be an aid to judgement not a substitute. And, good commentators don’t infer they have the only answer and their peers, and clients, are all idiots.
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Not always a waste, but definitely so if used for the wrong reasons. My simple rule of thumb: if you want to understand behaviour and its drivers, don’t do groups (for the reasons outlined in the article), immerse yourself in consumers’ lives in context instead. If you want a reaction to an idea (note: reaction, never opinion), or a ‘snapshot’ of how people feel, then groups (or one-on-one interviews) are fine.
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This critique of focus groups has been doing the rounds since at least 1997, when I started work as a junior researcher/planner type. Key points are: they are flawed if you want them to be able to do everything; they are okay if you acknowledge their limitations; they are best used in combination with other research tools – ideally a blend of qual and quant.
A meaningful critique beyond these basic points above would be best levelled less at focus groups as a method and more at the people (clients and agencies) who continue to use them badly.
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While I’m not a fan of focus groups, its when they’re incorrectly used as the holy grail for judging a campaign or creative territory as opposed to insight generation or a toe in the water for a wider audience where it becomes more damaging than good.
However I’ll take focus groups over data based on clicks any day of the week.
Any good moderator + controller would immediately be able to counter all the above points, flag them in their report or better yet, identify people in the sample who are steering the group, and kick them out (in a polite, ‘sorry we actually overbooked, but here’s your cash anyway’ kind of way).
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Hmm. Some groups are a waste of time. But sometimes there’s gold, an insight that changes everything. This should justify the rest.
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No single person, from any walk of life is likely to ever be ‘reflective of the general population’.
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Give 20 strangers $20 to go in a strange room, for 20 minutes and they’ll say 20 strange things. Just ask all the Election Polls.
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The “focus” in the name describes what they were originally intended for and would still be valuable if used for: to focus the thoughts that would be studied in thorough quantitative research.
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Yeah, but there’s not reflective and there’s “I would voulntarily spend my time in a focus group” not reflective
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Very narrow-minded view. They are not a solution for every problem but when used well by a competent researcher they can add real value. Author has moderated ‘hundreds of groups’…wondering why if they think they serve no real purpose? Not the type of researcher I’d want working on my brand.
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This is exactly what someone who has no idea what a well-run focus group looks like would say.
“Focus groups rely on participants relaying exactly what they think and how they would behave, but we know people don’t always walk their talk.” – what absolute nonsense. Focus groups are designed to accommodate this, in fact the entire design of a group is based on the need to get past the fact that people can’t always express, or even know, what they mean.
That’s not to say there aren’t often better ways to run qualitative research. Online in particular, if done well, can be excellent. But this blanket statement that focus groups are bad just highlights your ignorance.
A good researcher will pick the right tool for the job, and sometimes that tool is a group.
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All feedback is useful if kept in context Years of researching tv ad concepts taught me that if anything flies through research, don’t make it— it will be wallpaper at best. And forget black humour —
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Wow! Waste of time? The reason they still work, because the results have been successful more times than not. You can’t make such a blanket statement without proof. Perhaps run a series of focus groups to see if they work!
Seriously sounds like an amateur’s simplistic viewpoint.
We put up two campaigns. Client wanted A. Thanks to well selected and well run group, B came out. But it was a nervous launch. It followed exactly as predicted and it took off like a rocket. And same on repeat for many others. One day someone will call out data and same old same old arguments.
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What is this, bash the market research industry month?
Focus groups and tracking are dead apparently ! What’s left?
Why does mumbrella give a voice to these fact-deprived opinion writers?
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There are two ways to build your business in a competitive market : be better, or try to make your competition look worse. One requires talent.
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Thousands of businesses threw away their money last year because they used focus groups for some very bad reasons.
Most wanted to validate decisions they’d already made. Focus groups are great for this, as participants can be easily steered to provide the answers you’re looking for. All you have to do is have a cooperative moderator, stack the deck with leading questions, and make it absolutely clear that you are not only looking for agreement, but for group consensus.
Too many treated focus groups as quantitative data. Nothing is more absurd than counting qualitative responses as if they were part of a statistically valid sample of randomly selected participants.
Some did groups because they liked the voyeuristic feel of sitting in the dark behind a mirror eavesdropping on the conversations of others. Erika Hall of Mule Design calls focus groups “useless research theatre.” In her article, Focus Groups Are Worthless, she says “No one buys shoes or cooks dinner sitting at a table under fluorescent lights while engaged in a moderated group discussion.”
They all believed focus groups provided answers, when the real purpose of focus groups has always been to generate more questions.
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