Bob Kaden

Focus groups and other forms of qualitative research are intended to surface consumer motivations and attitudes. Armed with this insight, companies can then create more insightful marketing programs and new products. Or so the story goes.

The problem is that consumers usually don't provide breakthrough thinking when questioned using traditional and arcane research approaches. The trick is getting below the surface so that you can uncover consumer wants that are new, unique, potential moneymakers and not already being addressed by competitors.

For many products and services, consumers don't pay much attention to why they behave as they do. They operate out of rote or fixed patterns and usually give superficial reasons for their behavior, often unaware of their unconscious motivations and reasons for behavior.

There are two most common reasons that marketing research doesn’t play a more prominent role in companies are TIME and MONEY.

For the most part, small and mid-size companies don’t budget the time necessary to insure research is part of their decision making process. If they do any research it’s often the “Microwave Kind.” The quick and dirty, often after the fact, when things are going bad, when you need the answers yesterday, when nothing you’re doing seems to work kind.

For marketing research to be “real research”, it should be conducted early on. Before major decisions are made in regard marketing and product planning. Real research takes a more time than The Microwave Kind…usually 8 to 12 weeks more.

If you’re not giving yourself the luxury of a little time, if you want to bet your bottom line for the next year or so on the heat ‘em up quick kind of research, if your concern is with thinking fast rather than thinking smart, Microwave research will do...

Writing an effective questionnaire is not a task for novices. At the very least it requires an understanding of four basics. These are:

1. Considering the differences that exist when writing a questionnaire that respondent’s will fill out themselves as opposed to when a professional interviewer administers the questionnaire to the respondent.

2. Knowing what questions should be asked early on in the questionnaire,
in the middle or toward the end.

3. Understanding how to phrase questions

4. Being sensitive to questionnaire length.

I am fully aware that it boarders on the absurd to address as broad a topic as questionnaire construction in a blog piece—or even in two, three, ten or twenty pieces for that matter. There are dozens of books on the subject not to mention thousands of technical papers. But in discussing certain givens here it might, in some small way, help in your next market research study. So, here goes:

1. Self...

Many companies, particularly, small and mid-size ones, conduct focus groups because they find them thought-provoking, interesting and an economical way obtaining attitudes of customers and prospects. But they often take findings from focus groups as gospel and make unwise investments as a result.

In his book entitled “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell is highly critical of focus groups and refers to the information groups provide as “thin-slicing.” And he makes a very good argument against the use of groups as a valid research technique.

Consider this line of questioning for a discount store client:

Moderator: The last time you shopped at a discount store for clothes, what was the most the most important reason you choose the store you did?

Respondent in a focus group: They have the lowest prices.

Moderator: What else was important?

Respondent: I know if I go to that store, I can get in and out quickly?

Moderator. Anything else?