Among the most important advantages of focus groups is the fact that you can learn the story behind the data.
As a disadvantage, he emphasizes that there may be a confirmation bias by the moderators.
Read: What is brand mission and why is it important?
In marketing, perhaps one of the most popular concepts among marketers is the focus group when it comes to market research. As you may already know, it is understood as a group meeting where you are going to talk or debate about a specific topic. However, the use of this technique is one that comes with advantages and disadvantages that must be known to define if it is the best way to go in order to make decisions about a product or service. This time we will see some of them.
According to HubSpot, these are the advantages and disadvantages that exist around the focus groups that brands develop as part of their analysis of the market and consumers.
Advantage
You get the story behind the data
In accordance with. The source, in the focus groups, the qualitative data has the center of attention. Survey data can be considered incredibly powerful, but number rationales are difficult to understand without context.
In that sense, focus groups are understood as a way to understand how someone really feels about a business, they provide the why behind the data.
If someone answers the question in a way that interests you, you may have a chance to go deeper. Ask why, see how the other participants feel about the answer that caught their attention. With these groups you can calibrate facial expressions and tone of voice to see how people react to what they are saying. You’ll then end up with emotional input from the target market that surveys may not be able to provide on their own.
Focus groups are interactive
In relation to this point in favor of a focus group, the source points out that those who respond to a survey or questionnaire cannot choose products or use them, but they can if they are in one of these groups. If the focus group subject is tangible, it is possible to observe and ask about how the participants in the exercise use the product and feel about elements such as packaging or design.
Here it will be possible to see the product through the eyes of the end user, which can be of great help to identify points that were not yet considered prior to the exercise. Thus, the fact that they are face-to-face helps to see what might be being overlooked and what stands out to the consumer at first glance.
They are more than efficient interviews
The problem with interviews, compared to a focus group, is that developing them with individuals can take more time than bringing together a group of people, equal to the number you intend to interview. Imagine that you want to interview 100 people and each interview or focus group lasts one hour. Obtaining the opinions of those 100 people would take 100 hours if interviewed, but only 20 hours if the participants were divided into groups of five.
In this way, it is possible to obtain qualitative comments from several people in a much shorter period of time. This results in that time is saved, the duration can even be reduced even more if the majority of the participants think alike.
Disadvantages
Now that you know the points that focus groups have in favor, it is time to go on to see why not everything is “pink” with them. Among the disadvantages they have, 3 stand out:
They are not entirely representative
As a first point against it, it stands out that what is gained with the depth of the focus group options, is lost with the size of the sample.
Since these groups take more time than exercises such as survey development, you will reach a scenario where tens or hundreds of people will be heard in longer than it would take to listen to thousands of people through your own surveys or by exploring secondary research, such as studies. or previously conducted surveys.
This restricts the number of people whose contributions will be received, which means that the findings may not represent the opinions of the entire target market.
They can motivate groupthink
One way to exemplify this disadvantage that focus groups have is on those occasions in which in a meeting there are one or two people who express an idea with which they do not agree, but everyone else is pig with that idea and they manifest it before you have a chance to present your opinion. As a result, you may decide to go with the idea that the majority agree on, even though you are not the biggest fan of it.
This is called groupthink, and it happens as is when most people support a vocalized idea that not everyone believes is correct, but they do it for the simple fact of moving forward or trying to avoid conflict.
Focus groups can quickly turn into a stage with one or two participants providing most of the responses, while the other members present silently nod their heads. The problem is that you are now only receiving information from those two people, rather than from the entire focus group, as you would expect.
Fortunately, this disadvantage can be circumvented by calling specific group members to respond in depth, although some may be resistant due to shyness or lack of interest.
Moderators may have a confirmation bias
Finally, there is the disadvantage of confirmation bias in the moderators of such a group. Moderators are often tied to the project in question and may enter the session with an idea of where they think it will go, or want it to go.
For example, a moderator may want a product to be priced, packaged, or colored in a certain way, and may lead the discussion to that conclusion.
The good news is that this challenge can also be set aside simply by explicitly instructing the moderators to set aside their personal preferences and act as an objective facilitator for this exercise.
