The respondents to be included in focus groups must be carefully selected. You must be sure that they really represent your potential target customers and that they are capable of giving you valuable insight. You also want to avoid people who might tip off potential competitors and ‘‘professional respondents’’ who have been to so many focus groups that they are incapable of giving fresh, objective responses to your questions. You should become personally involved in decisions regarding the selection of respondents.
The key to recruiting exactly the kind of respondents you are looking for is the development of a very specific and detailed screening questionnaire. Put a great deal of thought into the questions that will be asked of potential respondents. You will want to know:
- Whether they fit your target market profile.
- Whether they have the right income, education, and lifestyle.
- Whether they work for your competition, or for any other business that might result in a leak of your proprietary information. Examples are advertising agencies, certain related retailers, and market research firms.
Asking such questions beforehand can improve the quality of the information you obtain during the group discussions. You may need a professional moderator to help you develop the best possible screening questionnaire for your purposes.
Psychographic recruiting often helps bring in people who have more than normal insight into the personalities of new business ventures. In this technique, the respondents’ thought patterns and habits are matched against the recruiting requirements. For example, you might want only people who have a record of trying new products early, since these are the potential customers who will have to be sold first. This technique can also help you recruit respondents who are unusually good communicators, which will be useful when you are trying to identify their innermost feelings. You can ascertain these qualities in people by including sophisticated psychological questions in the screening questionnaire. Ask your researcher to consider psychographic recruiting.