In one hyphenated word? Open-ended.
Following are some general principles of focus group questioning:
- Warm up with innocuous conversation that lets people begin to establish rapport and get used to talking in a group
- Start with general questions, and move to the specific
- Spend the most amount of time on the project’s central issues. Think in terms of, “if I had to come away from these groups with only one answer, what would it be?”
- Don’t let the agenda get sidetracked by having to cram too many questions into it. When this happens, the moderator ends up having to choose between accepting the first answers or leaving out questions.
- Stay away from questions that allow “yes” or “no” as a response.
- If there is anything in the subject matter that may make participants uncomfortable, save it for later in the groups once the moderator has had the opportunity to help the groups establish a comfortable flow and rapport with each other.
- To prevent "groupthink", make participants write down answers first, then defend those responses in the discussion.
- Defend and encourage disagreement; pay attention to body language and probe when it appears someone may be disagreeing with others.
- Probe, probe and probe some more. Do not accept the first answers, or assume you know what they mean. Ask - play dumb - or just look confused and stay silent - it opens them up.
- Encourage stories - just be sure it’s on point, and that there is a “moral” at the end relevant to the objectives. Like, “tell me a story about one time when you received exceptional service.”
There also are so traps you should take care NOT to fall into:
- As my wife is fond of saying, don't try to fit 10 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound sock. Except she doesn't say "stuff". You know what I mean. Don't try to cover too much ground with the questions - you need to be able to give the participants time to think and answer the questions, as well as respond to the thinking and answers of the other participants.
- Quantification style questions are fine as long as they lead to qualitative explanation. "How many of you prefer..." should lead to "what about that do you like?" and other probing questions.
- Don't get into a habit of asking questions that allow a one-word response with no explanation - this will lead to the respondents' thinking that is all you want from them.
- Don't allow a completely tangential line of questions "while we have them in the room" - such as "While we have them thinking about advertising, why not ask about our pricing?"
4 comments:
Actually, you should never ask consumers any kind of question at all. I made a lifetime of proactively stimulating consumer minds to say and do things people never dreamed of instead: resulting in a lot of successful new products and strategic innovations at companies from P&G to Coke. Why not do focus groups and why not ask questions? If you ask consumers no questions they can tell you no lies. As attorney Atticus Finch said in To Kill A Mockingbird, "You can't ask a question you don't already know the answer to," which is why so much research only reconfirms the things you already know. My personal spin? "When you ask consumers questions you don't get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked, which is a form of your own personal bias that will lead you astray." One must proactively stimulate consumer minds rather than reactively ask questions if you want to extract from consumers that which lives beyond their current frame of reference. Great post.
What kind of project would I use this on? Say you were Staples and the strategy that had once made you all powerful now had turned you into a heavily price driven commodity adrift in a sea of copy cat competitors. THAT answer would be a strategic innovation.
I have no doubt you get great results from your techniques, and there are many ways to stimulate creative responses from consumers that do not involve direct questions.
But I still like to ask them, as do my clients, and I'd like to think I ask them in such a way as to give equal weight to any response!
I do think that you made one terrific point that is lost on many marketers - and that is one must be proactive rather than reactive in the questions that are asked.
Thank you, Martin, for an excellent and thoughtful comment.
Your wife sounds like a genius. :) I love a woman who can break it down!
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