The concept of focus group is a method or system for collecting information necessary to carry out an investigation. This type of technique is often used a lot in marketing to do product tests and receive feedback from a group of people.
Thanks to this modality, a wide variety of information about opinions, ideas, motivations and attitudes of the people who take part in this meeting can be obtained. However, experts find a disadvantage in this method, which is that it uses a small sample, so the results could not be generalized.
Characteristics of the focus group
This system is based on the meeting of a group of people, ranging from 6 to 12 members, who must answer a series of questions and generate a debate around a specific topic, such as an idea, a product, a service, advertising, etc.
Among the important elements of the focus group is that the questions formulated by the moderator are answered by the interaction of the group in a dynamic way.
It is usually carried out in a spacious and comfortable room, where the participants are confident enough to participate and give authentic responses. With the results of the focusgroup, prototypes or concepts can be analyzed in a short time, reducing launch costs and margins of error.
How to do a focus group?
There are a number of elements that will allow you to achieve a successful focus group:
- Choose the target: you must be very clear about the audience to which the object of observation is oriented. For example, if it is a male article, the logical thing would be to gather a larger percentage of men.
- Group management: have a script, where all the ideas appear and the order of importance is identified so that the discussion group receives the information. The moderator must be clear about the essential issues to be discussed.
- Number of participants and duration: the duration of the focusgroup is between one hour and two hours. For its part, the number of members will range between 6 and 12 people.
- Choose a suitable moderator: they will act as a link between the employer and the group of participants. You should get all the answers the company needs to know.
- Collection of results: these sessions are usually recorded so that the subsequent analysis of the work can be carried out.
Now that you know what a focus group is, you can use it to make your Market studies and improve your qualitative research techniques with which to obtain information about your products.