Asking the right questions during focus groups is obviously the key to learning how your potential customers feel about your business venture. Finding out how someone really feels can be quite tricky. It is important that you know what to listen for when respondents are discussing their reactions. Here are three methods that can be valuable in evaluating responses during focus groups.
The collage. An important step is to determine what image of your product or service your consumers have. A fun and effective technique for finding this out is to have focus group respondents build a collage. By selecting the pictures that will go into the collage and then describing the collage, these people can give you real insight into how they see your business venture.
Focus group respondents like to participate in this type of activity, and generally everyone gets involved. The technique works with consumers of household products and with professional buyers of technical products. It has even been used in groups of potential customers of business-tobusiness products. Some of these people have not been involved in a ‘‘cutand-paste exercise’’ like this since they left grammar school, but they seem to be quite enthusiastic about building a collage in a focus group.
Forced relationships. Sometimes the best way to understand the perceived personality of a new product or service is to force a relationship between the product and something else. It is not always easy for individuals, separately or in groups, to describe what they really feel about a product or service. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for people to visualize whether a new product or service matches their needs. The forced relationship technique often helps overcome this problem.
In this technique, you ask respondents to force a relationship between your product or service and something totally different. You then ask them why they have chosen this relationship. For example, if you have an idea for a new financial product, such as a new credit card, then you might have respondents try to match your idea with an animal. If you have an idea for a new hair spray, then you might want to have them relate this to a make of automobile. These totally unrelated images can give you very revealing insights into the respondents’ perceptions of your new business venture.
A good example of this occurred during the evaluation of a new retail service for a large bank. Respondents in focus groups were asked to pick an animal that reminded them of this new banking concept. Although many animals were mentioned, the lion was the most frequently brought up. When respondents were asked why, they usually said it was because the lion is the king of the jungle, and this concept reminded them of a powerful service offered by a big, dominant bank.
In probing further, it was determined that these potential customers felt that they would not trust the reliability of the new service concept if it were offered by a small local bank. They felt that it required too many resources. In fact, they felt that there were only a few banks that could pull off something of this magnitude, and that the bank doing the research was one of them.
Personality associations. Many people are reluctant to tell you exactly how they personally relate to a product or service. For example, some women may personally like the idea of buying fake jewelry, but want others to believe that they are the type of person who buys only real jewelry. In a group discussion, therefore, these women may tell you that a certain jewelry concept is great, but is not for them (although internally they really feel that it is for them).
An excellent technique for breaking down this barrier is the personalityassociations technique. With this technique, respondents are shown a series of photographs of different types of individuals and asked how they feel those individuals would probably react. The particular photographs used will depend on the nature of the concept being evaluated. With a new consumer product for women, for example, you might use a variety of pictures of women in different age groups, in different types of occupations, and with different income levels. Show each respondent a new idea, then ask him or her to select the photograph best representing:
The type of person who would be likely to buy the product or service
The type of person who would not be likely to buy it
Respondents will often tell you things about the person in the photograph that they would never tell you about themselves (although they are really talking about themselves). It is somehow safer to give intimate details about an abstract person than to provide those same details about oneself. This technique enables you to find out many details about potential target customers for your business that would be difficult to obtain through direct questioning.
This chapter gives a marketing plan for selling a branded line of hardware-in supermarkets throughout the United States. The plan includes the strategy for a unique distribution program in which the company provides retailers with a complete inventory of hardware products on a distinctive display. Advertising and promotion programs are included, along with the details of a distribution system. The marketing plan is based on consumer needs identified through a series of focus groups. The plan includes these consumer research results along with the results of trade research, marketing objectives, and financial forecasts.