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Introduction. Getting Clear Insight to How Customers Think. What are Focus Groups? How Focus Groups are used in Business and Government. Focus Group Creation and Use. How to properly create focus groups How to effectively use focus groups. Evaluating Results. What are Focus Groups???.
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Introduction Getting Clear Insight to How Customers Think • What are Focus Groups? • How Focus Groups are used in Business and Government. • Focus Group Creation and Use. • How to properly create focus groups • How to effectively use focus groups. • Evaluating Results.
What are Focus Groups??? • Focus Groups are a group of people, that are brought together, and asked to share their opinions about a product or service.
Where Focus Groups are Used • Business Use • Drive Marketing Strategies • How customers think • Government Use • Forming election strategies • Publishing trends • Impeachment rhetoric
Creating Focus Groups • Hiring outside consultants vs. Internally established groups. • Advantages • Disadvantages • Choosing a Moderator • Internal vs. External
Hiring Consultants • Hiring external Consulting companies to establish and moderate the focus group.
Advantages of Consultants • Limited knowledge of products • Will not make bias decisions • Have favorable results • Trained, experienced and competent professional researchers.
Disadvantages of Consultants • Expensive • Unable to conduct groups on your schedule • Do not want to risk an unsuccessful group • “I am familiar with my product and can ask the right questions”
Choosing a Moderator • Someone who knows how to benefit from group dynamics • Can use techniques that reduce negative influence or feedback
Choosing a Moderator • Can control the dominant group member • Can motivate the shy member to participate • Use techniques to extract the maximum amount of information possible
Internal Moderators • Internal moderators can save money, but can inhibit group output • Chance that participants will refrain from showing concern or acting negatively to ideas. • Have great knowledge on product, which could intimidate participants
External Moderators • Extremely helpful in designing groups • Professional moderators bring experience from different research situations • Objective • Able to extract a lot of information from group members
Facilitating Focus Groups • Key Concepts • Advantages and Disadvantages of use. • Things to be careful of. • New Technology.
Facilitating Focus Groups • Key Concept • Explore a topic to form ideas, not definitive answers. • Focus groups provide insight in exploratory work to help companies realize the range of issues, perception of these issues, and the intensity of feelings of their customers.
Advantages of Focus Groups • There are only a limited number of people asked to participate, so participant downtime is reduced. • Gives excellent insight onto what customers believe. • Low cost.
Disadvantages of Focus Groups • Yield a wide range of ideas on a topic, not definitive answers • Results could be misleading • Only show a small percentage of what population believes. • Inexperienced moderators can impair or ruin expected results
Things to be careful of • As focus groups are relatively expensive, companies must make sure they get their monies worth. • Choosing and distinguishing between good and bad group moderators.
New Technology • New voting devices • Participants can vote confidentially to questions by pressing buttons on a hand held device. • Computers can instantly process information for immediate debate
Evaluating Results • Establishing valid results from Focus Group. • Distinguishing between different results to see what the possibilities of advance are
Real world Examples • “Focus groups were used to provide strategic input to elections of Prime Ministers and presidents, feedback for action by political groups or companies”.
Summary • From this slide show, you should have learned • What Focus Groups Are • How to Create and what to look for in creating focus groups. • Differences between Internal and External focus groups.
Summary • Advantages of hiring consultants • Choosing an effective moderator • How to properly facilitate focus groups.
Summary • Things to be careful of when using focus groups • New technologies used • Real world Examples of Focus group use.
Works Cited • Cowley, James. Anyone can run research focus groups, right? Marketing News. V33 n5. Mar 1, 1999. P. 15 • Vincent, Lynn. 7 Deadly sins of focus groups. Bank Marketing. V31 n5. May 1999 p 36-39 • Greenbaum, Thomas L. Doing your own Focus Group is like fixing your own plumbing. Marketing News. V25 n11. May 27, 1991. P. 8-9