I was running some consumer focus groups for a client just recently, unpacking the unmet emotional needs of customers in their market. The groups were very interesting to moderate and sparked plenty of conversation inside the room and behind the glass.
In an Uber on my way home from the venue, a distinct memory somehow displaced the roiling mix of quotes, themes and ideas racing through my mind. The memory was of when I attended a conference, probably 7-8 years ago as a less seasoned researcher.
I distinctly remember attending a presentation that went into detail about online focus groups. The thinking by the presenter was that eventually the traditional face-to-face focus group the industry was using at the time would be cast asunder in favour of digital platform-led qual. Several knowing nods around the room told me that this is something I should be looking into and adopting before I was left behind.
As I was partaking in some free Uber mints, it occurred to me how curious it is that my partners and I are still primarily choosing to conduct old-school focus groups all these years later. I started to think through why.
Let me take a moment to say that I think online focus groups can be fine. In general, the times I’ve used them for my partners have resulted in an interesting (if not surface level) data set to work through. They are great for interactive exercises (card sorts, click and drag) and tend not to be impacted quite as much by group think. I get that ‘they are what you make it’, just like any research method.
However, I think I’ve worked out why I still use in-person focus groups more often than not. It comes back to my belief that people express themselves differently in written form than they do face-to-face.
Have you ever read an email from someone and thought – ‘it feels like this person is annoyed with me’ – and you instinctively start trying to work out what you’ve done wrong? When you eventually pick up the phone, you realise that this person had just been in a hurry and actually isn’t annoyed in the slightest. It happens to me from time to time, and is just one example of what I think I mean when I say that online focus groups feel less truthful.
I’d just spent the preceding 3.5 hours in a focus group room surrounded by my client’s customers. I’d been able to look them in the eye and use my experience to judge what was bluster and what was truth. I was able to call them by their first name, creating trust and a willingness to engage. More importantly MY CLIENT had spent the preceding 3.5 hours sitting behind the one-way mirror listening to their own customers talk about their needs.
Running face-to-face focus groups requires craft and graft – they’re not easy to organise, not easy to moderate and require strong interpretation and analysis skills. They can suffer from group-think, shallowness and poor design, but an experienced and skilled moderator can manage these risks.
They require dragging people out of their homes and lives for a couple of hours. They require booking a physical venue. They take time and effort.
However, for me they clearly remain the best option for testing ideas, exploring customer needs and forging brands and advertising. They are rich, they are time-tested and they are fun. They are instinctive, interpretive and get to the very primal need we have to be social and share our thoughts out loud. This is why I almost always prefer to recommend face-to-face focus groups to my clients.
I find that you simply cannot replace having a conversation with someone, be it a client, a partner or a customer. While the basic spirit of online focus groups aligns with what we seek to do in traditional focus groups, I feel that the benefits of the format do not outweigh the costs.
/end industry dinosaur rant.
Z