Focus groups are one of the oldest customer research methods - bringing together 5-10 or so people in a physical or virtual room to engage in conversation and answer questions. However, I’ve seen one business after another jump into requesting and running focus groups like they were a magical, go-to elixir for every ailment and open question.
So, what do teams need to know in deciding whether a focus group will be the best method to get the answers they’re after?
With this overview on focus group pros and cons, I hope to do two things:
Show unfamiliar teams what factors to consider before choosing to run a focus group, and to…
Save me time writing these same points over and over in the future everytime someone goes straight into suggesting we run one; preservation of my patience is a great self-motivator haha.
First, ask yourself
Are you trying to learn what people think, do, or feel with respect to customer activities, brand proof points, or new feature ideas? ➡️ A focus group might help, but be very cognizant of this method’s bias traps and interpretation risks (see below).
Are you trying to make a significant product / service / brand / strategy decision or validate whether something is valuable or usable? ➡️ A focus group is probably not the best method, at least on its own.
Pros
Focus groups can allow you to…
Hear the similarities and differences of people's past experiences with a product/service - eg. One person's story might help unlock another person’s memory of a particularly insightful experience
See and hear people’s initial gut reactions to product / service / brand ideas - eg. Do customers understand your draft marketing campaign and what you're asking of them?
Moderate mini-workshop activities and other research tasks with multiple participants at the same time - eg. Running multiple parallel card sorts and then comparing results side by side to learn why they’re similar or different
Learn how a sample of people interpret and respond to draft survey questions before it’s sent out to a larger audience
Learn how people would vote and feel about a set of presented options - eg. "Please vote on which of these things is the least desirable to you today"; remember, seeing an overwhelming positive or negative vote in a focus group does not guarantee future results, it’s merely a means for understanding their thought processes
Elicit a reason or explanation for why a problem or result identified in your quantitative data might be happening
Cons
However, focus groups can have a high risk of creating attractive yet ultimately misleading insights and decisions if you are…
Asking participants to predict their future behaviour - eg. Unanimous answers to "Would this be a product you'd buy?" might sound validating, but in reality, what people say often does not match with what they do
Asking particpants which options they 'most prefer' and interpreting those answers as a near guarantee that all other customers like them would also buy / do / use this thing too
Walking away believing that you’ve heard the 'full' story from each participant when in reality, people in a group tend to hide critical details out of fear of feeling judged, thus often only putting their ‘best selves’ forward - eg. Participant A does not voice their dissenting opinion to the group, they don’t admit aloud when they don’t understand a presented concept, or they omit a potentially embarrassing flub out of embarassment even if that ‘flub’ would have been a valuable finding to the researchers
Believing that the strongest (ie. loudest) opinions in the room represent everyone’s collective consensus - eg. More often than not, 2-3 voices in a focus group will end up dominating the group's conversation which can drive other participants to silence or group-think
Missing when participants unwittingly ‘make up’ their answers when they’re asked questions they hadn’t previously asked themselves - eg. Asking a participant or the wider group, “Why didn’t you click on that ad when you saw it?” is dangerous because most ‘answers’ to this type of question will be made up on the fly unless that participant had actually stopped to consider that ad the day they saw it
Missing when participants are only giving answers so that they do not appear to be unhelpful or like they're not contributing to the group conversation
Encouraging group discussions by unintentionally asking leading questions or challenging participants' answers - eg. Asking "Did you really think that?" will encourage participants to only give you answers that they think you'll want to hear or worse, they’ll stop speaking all together to avoid their thoughts and opinions being challenged in front of their peers
Believing that focus groups are statistically significant sample sizes that can adequately represent the views of the larger population
Assuming that one or more focus groups can provide all of the insight needed to make a well-informed decision
Most of all, assuming that a focus group is quicker, cheaper, and easier to run than other potentially more informative research methods at your disposal…