Project Proposals

1. Thanks for patience – I think you deserve my attention and thorough feedback. Ask for what you need from me going forward in terms of data collection. • If you revised, I’ll get back to you by Sunday night/Monday morning. • Onward! Project Proposals

2. Think about ‘signposts’ and guiding your reader in this type of writing. • As you revise: • Integrate purpose, justification and preview into ‘narrative’ introduction. • Organizational preview of literature review sections. • Sum up and transition from literature review to methods. • Begin separate sections for: (a) Method, (b) Results, and (c) Discussion & Limitations. • Clarity of your study’s purpose is key! Your literature review now becomes the foundation for your own study. • Revise now – set aside an hour or two to go back through my comments and do some editing as you’re collecting data. You’ll keep revising regardless . . . General writing comments

3. Focus Groups often key to marketing research vs. basic research with some different goals. • Why use focus groups? Why not? • Tremendous changes in how technology has enabled doing focus groups . . . • Where have we seen focus groups lately? Focus Group Methods Information Iowa State Exenstion "Focus Group Fundamentals" (2004) as well as Morgan (2002) and Casey (2001)

4. Gives us insight into social sense making processes, not same as individual interviews. • Means, we see how people put ideas together socially, chain off each other, combine ideas, and create new ideas through interaction. • Like interviews, does allow for participants to bring their own insight, not driven by pre-existing survey questions. • Flexible, allows for emergence of insights differently than survey data methods. Why use?

5. Not effective for talking about sensitive topics. Warm topics – ok, - Hot topics, no • Must be cognizant of how ‘social norms’ are shaping the conversations. • Not representative of national, state, or large populations similar to some large scale survey methods (although you can design to get perspectives from particular market or knowledge segments). • Must have skills to moderate; personalities can dominate conversations in unexpected ways! Limitations, drawbacks

6. Want a diversity of perspectives, but want diversity within a group of homogenous individuals (as much as you can control similarities). What similarities do you initially think matters? Yet may change. • For example, CEOs with line-workers in the same company – power difference might prevent openness? Openness about racial stereotyping? • Multiple groups allows you to test out assumptions about homogeneity. Designing Participant Criteria

7. Enjoyable, open, focused conversation among acquaintances that allows for agreement, disagreement, and new insights to emerge. • Different levels of structure can be employed, depending on goals. • Balanced between focusing on the FG protocol and allowing the conversation to emerge organically. • Usually general to specific ordering of questions. • Allows for individuals to ‘have their say’ but also manage talk time of any one participant. What’s a ‘good’ FG?

8. Start with allows for discussion of general topic, interests, and issues. • Then, direct others to respond to each others’ comments. • Goal is not for moderator to talk. • Sometimes have to ‘thank’ people for their contributions and note that you want to get everyone’s thoughts – or direct conversation to quieter participants. Other tips. • Introduce new topics slowly and appropriately. Moderation Tactics

9. Focus is on themes, insights, synergistic ideas emerging from the conversation. • Provides key excerpts to illustrate themes, similar to some types of interview data analyses. • Also valuable to consider what is ‘not said’ in one FG or across multiple FGs. • And, when appropriate, take note of non-verbal behaviors, not just what is said but ‘how’ it is said and interpret why? Analysis

10. Virtual Focus Groups are a huge new arm of marketing research and also growing use in academic research. • Who has used? Benefits? Challenges? • Let’s one software example. • Other companies: Gongos • Have you participated in online focus groups or market research? • Not just proprietary software any more: Facebook example. What? You still do FGs F-t-T?

11. FG can do something other methods of data collection can’t do – group sense making. • Can get closer to the thoughts, perceptions of a particular group of individuals, but be careful of generalizing. Insight, not prediction. • Can be used as a pre-curser to other types of data collection. In Sum . . .

12. Start collecting data! • Keep a journal – take field notes. • Ask for help – email with questions or as interesting things ‘happen’ • One finalize protocols, if you are still doing so. • Keep revising literature reviews. • Examples posted on the blog. • Learn a little more APA, if needed. • Next week talk about case study methods and also start to hear your data collection experiences. Project Next Steps