the new science of focus groups

American Demographics, March 1, 2003

Last Spring, Acxiom began to offer a database called Personicx, a system which assigns to each U.S. household a specific segment based on life stage, purchasing behavior and attitudes. While databases like this have long been available at the neighborhood level, the ability to target households within a neighborhood is a more specific form of segmentation that should be particularly useful to focus group researchers, says Herman. (The database is updated monthly.)

A case in point: Though the United States Department of Agricultures (USDA) isn't necessarily the first entity you'd think of as being on the cutting-edge of marketing, it relied on Personicx last year. The agency wanted to get a food-safety message out to households who were most at risk of improperly cooking burgers or mishandling salmon. The system enabled the USDA to recruit focus groups from households it believed fit a target demographic and psychographic profile, and it was also able to use its knowledge of the segments to help analyze the results.

DIGGING deeper

Once the respondents are recruited, focus group researchers plan their strategy for getting at what consumers really think and feel. It's a task that has always been a challenge for qualitative researchers - one that has depended on the skill of the moderator, says Kirk Ward, formerly director of new-product development at Hershey and now president of Innovation Focus Research in Lancaster, Pa. Phil Johnston, senior vice president at Cleveland-based ad agency Marcus Thomas, LLC, whose clients include the Cleveland Indians and Alcoa, agrees, saying that as Americans are sampled more frequently, they become more research-savvy.

"As people are exposed to more research, they begin to understand what's expected of them," he says. Frequently, consumers will simply parrot back marketing or advertising messages, which offers little to companies seeking consumer insights.

To help consumers relax and thereby elicit more authentic responses, qualitative researchers have been turning to approaches proven effective in ethnographic research. For one thing, they might downplay the marketing agenda of the research experience. "What will increasingly happen is moderators will acknowledge the importance of environment," says Insights' Cohen. "I've always been a big believer in using environments that are much more comfortable and that are more adaptive to the product," she says. She finds it more effective, for example, to speak to women about female health products in a living room setting rather than at a conference table, and to speak to children in a room arranged like a play area. Some companies are starting to offer researchers this flexibility, she says. INGather Research in Denver, Colo., offers facilities were focus groups can be held that look just like a living room, a kitchen, a playroom, a bar and even a courtroom - and all are equipped with large two-way mirrors along one wall.

Other qualitative researchers are breaking through people's defenses by resorting to subtle trickery. Rather than simply holding up print advertisements in a focus group and asking for reactions - which is not the way that consumers would encounter the ads in the real world - the Marcus Thomas firm inserted the print ads for a campaign it was testing into magazine mock-ups. "We then had the moderator, before leaving the room, tell the respondents that in addition to the task at hand, we were evaluating certain publications, and to take a few minutes to flip through the magazines," says Johnston, senior vice president at Marcus Thomas. As a result, the firm was able to observe the focus group recruits interacting with the advertising in a more authentic manner.