Basic Methods to Get Feedback from Customers

Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD

Far too often, we think we know what our customers think and want because -- well, we just know, that's
all. Wrong! Businesses can't be successful if they don't continue to meet the needs of their customers.
Period. There should be few activities as important as finding out what your customers want for products
and services and finding out what they think of yours. Fortunately, there are a variety of practical
methods that businesses can use to feedback from customers.
The methods you choose and how you use them depend on what the type of feedback that you want
from customers, for example, to find out their needs in products and services, what they think about your
products and services, etc.
Employees -- Your employees of usually the people who interact the most with your customers. Ask
them about products and services that customers are asking for. Ask employees about what the
customers complain about.
Comment Cards -- Provide brief, half-page comment cards on which they can answer basic questions
such as: Were you satisfied with our services? How could we provide the perfect services? Are there any
services you'd like to see that don't exist yet?
Competition -- What is your competition selling? Ask people who shop there. Many people don't notice
sales or major items in stores. Start coaching those around you to notice what's going on with your
competition. (See Competitive Analysis.)
Customers -- One of the best ways to find out what customers want is to ask them. Talk to them when
they visit your facility or you visit theirs. (See Questioning and Listening.)
Documentation and Records -- Notice what customers are buying and not buying from you. If you
already know what customers are buying, etc., then is this written down somewhere? It should be so that
you don't forget, particularly during times of stress or when trying to train personnel to help you out.
Focus Groups -- Focus groups are usually 8-10 people that you gather to get their impressions of a
product or service or an idea. (See Focus Groups .)
Surveys by Mail -- You might hate answering these things, but plenty of people don't -- and will fill our
surveys especially if they get something in return. Promise them a discount if they return the completed
form to your facility. (See Survey Design.)
Telephone Surveys -- Hire summer students or part-time people for a few days every six months to do
telephone surveys. (See Survey Design.)
FOCUS GROUP
Focus groups are a powerful means to evaluate services or test new ideas. Basically, focus groups are
interviews, but of 6-10 people at the same time in the same group. One can get a great deal of
information during a focus group session.
Preparing for Session
1. Identify the major objective of the meeting.
2. Carefully develop fix to six questions (see below).
3. Plan your session (see below).
4. Call potential members to invite them to the meeting. Send them a follow-up invitation with a
proposed agenda, session time and list of questions the group will discuss. Plan to provide a copy of the
report from the session to each member and let them know you will do this.
5. About three days before the session, call each member to remind them to attend.
Developing Questions
1. Develop five to six questions - Session should last one to 1.5 hours -- in this time, one can ask at
most five or six questions.
2. Always first ask yourself what problem or need will be addressed by the information
gathered during the session, e.g., examine if a new service or idea will work, further understand how a
program is failing, etc.
3. Focus groups are basically multiple interviews. Therefore, many of the same guidelines for
conducting focus groups are similar to conducting interviews (see the Basics of Conducting Interviews).
Planning the Session
1. Scheduling - Plan meetings to be one to 1.5 hours long. Over lunch seems to be a very good time for
other to find time to attend.
2. Setting and Refreshments - Hold sessions in a conference room, or other setting with adequate air
flow and lighting. Configure chairs so that all members can see each other. Provide name tags for
members, as well. Provide refreshments, especially box lunches if the session is held over lunch.
3. Ground Rules - It's critical that all members participate as much as possible, yet the session move
along while generating useful information. Because the session is often a one-time occurrence, it's useful
to have a few, short ground rules that sustain participation, yet do so with focus. Consider the following
three ground rules: a) keep focused, b) maintain momentum and c) get closure on questions.
4. Agenda - Consider the following agenda: welcome, review of agenda, review of goal of the meeting,
review of ground rules, introductions, questions and answers, wrap up.
5. Membership - Focus groups are usually conducted with 6-10 members who have some similar
nature, e.g., similar age group, status in a program, etc. Select members who are likely to be
participative and reflective. Attempt to select members who don't know each other.
6. Plan to record the session with either an audio or audio-video recorder. Don't count on your
memory. If this isn't practical, involve a co-facilitator who is there to take notes.

Facilitating the Session

1. Major goal of facilitation is collecting useful information to meet goal of meeting.
2. Introduce yourself and the co-facilitator, if used.
3. Explain the means to record the session.
4. Carry out the agenda - (See "agenda" above).
5. Carefully word each question before that question is addressed by the group. Allow the group a
few minutes for each member to carefully record their answers. Then, facilitate discussion around the
answers to each question, one at a time.
6. After each question is answered, carefully reflect back a summary of what you heard (the
note taker may do this).
7. Ensure even participation. If one or two people are dominating the meeting, then call on others.
Consider using a round- table approach, including going in one direction around the table, giving each
person a minute to answer the question. If the domination persists, note it to the group and ask for ideas
about how the participation can be increased.
8. Closing the session - Tell members that they will receive a copy of the report generated from their
answers, thank them for coming, and adjourn the meeting.
Immediately After Session
1. Verify if the tape recorder, if used, worked throughout the session.
2. Make any notes on your written notes, e.g., to clarify any scratching, ensure pages are
numbered, fill out any notes that don't make senses, eta.
3. Write down any observations made during the session. For example, where did the session
occur and when, what was the nature of participation in the group? Were there any surprises during the
session? Did the tape recorder break?
HOW TO RUN A FOCUS GROUP.

Focus Group Meetings provide an excellent forum for customer service evaluation and feedback. These
informal meetings impress customers, internal and external, because they feel their opinions are being
taken seriously. By conducting a Focus Group you send a powerful message to your clients about your
commitment to excellence in service delivery.

It is important that the Focus Group should be a positive experience. Progress will not be achieved if it
degenerates into a "bun fight". If customers have a positive experience then they will be pleased to
provide feedback on future occasions.

You may like to invite selected members of your staff to sit in on the meeting. Exposure to customers is
especially useful for frontline staff. Do not flood the meeting with your staff otherwise the customers will
feel intimidated.

Follow these steps to ensure a successful outcome:

1. Begin the Focus Group by providing you visitors with coffee and tea PLUS some nice biscuits or cakes.
Food usually gets people into a positive mood and creates informal interaction before the group session
begins.

2. Open the meeting by thanking people for their attendance. Clearly state the reason for the meeting.
You might care to use words like these:

"Thank you for making your time available to attend our Focus
Group. The purpose of this meeting is to obtain your feedback
on our service delivery and to seek suggestions on ways in
which this service can be improved."

3. Ask the participants:

"What things do you like about the service that we provide?"

By asking this question you get the meeting off to a positive start and people do not feel threatened by
being asked to provide positive comments. Make a note of the comments that you receive as you can
pass on this good news to your team at the end of the meeting.
4. Ask the participants:

"I would now welcome your suggestions on ways in which we

can improve our service to you".

NOTE: Do not enter into debate over the suggestions. Your role is to LISTEN and gather information. Do
not seek to justify your position or explain why these suggestions can't be acted upon etc.

5. Close the Focus Group by thanking the participants for attending. Let them know that their comments
are taken seriously and that you will write to them in a week or so to let them know what action has
been taken as a result of the meeting.

It may be appropriate before or after the meeting to introduce clients to new products or services.
How To Get More Out Of Your Focus Groups

Remove some of the pitfalls that are hurting your focus group research
No matter how good you think your focus groups are, you almost certainly can get much more useful
information by avoiding some of the pitfalls and removing some of the constraints that reduce their
effectiveness. You can also greatly improve what you are getting by holding moderators to a higher
standard of professionalism. This article will show you how.
Most people are satisfied with the focus groups they are now getting. As far as I can tell, the amount of
qualitative research used by companies has been growing steadily. Whole industries, such as the
pharmaceutical industry, have been doing dramatically more qualitative research in the last year.
Companies that never "believed in qualitative" (as if it's a religion), have now became true believers.
Respondents who were never before researched are now being reached by telephone focus groups.
The main cause of the incredible growth of qualitative research, put simply, is that it is fundamentally
better than quantitative research, even though most people believe the opposite. That debate is beyond
the scope of this article and will be the subject of a separate article. The point I want to make here is
that there is an increasing appreciation of what focus groups can contribute to marketing success. But as
positive as people are to focus groups, many people have a vague feeling that they might be able to get
even more from them. What they don't know is that they would be ecstatic if they experienced what
focus groups can really do.

The pitfalls clients fall into

I have identified several pitfalls that clients fall into that lessens the effectiveness of their qualitative
research and keeps them from ever hearing truly great focus groups.
Pitfall #1: Running focus groups because you have no idea what else to do.
Now, there's nothing wrong with this per se, and I'm happy to accept your business. Focus groups are
the thing to do when you don't know what to do. But the pitfall is in coming at focus groups by default,
as the absence of something. When you're in this uncertain situation, recognize that you are in a
perfectly natural and normal state. People who are always certain are rarely in doubt, but often in error.
Turn the uncertainty into a positive. Make a list (right now) of ideas in the following form: If I knew -----,
I could ------. For example, "If I knew physicians' hidden fears, I could reassure them."
If you go to focus groups from strength rather than default, you will get more out of them because you
will plan them differently. Instead of focusing on how vague and uncertain your objectives are, focus on
all of the things you can get from focus groups. Many people allow themselves to be intimidated by
objectives like the following:

• A general exploration to see if the concerns or practices of the people in the marketplace have
changed.
• The creative stimulation of hearing real people struggle with a decision about your product.
• A better "feel" for the marketplace.
• A reality check on proposed new directions.
• Getting to know your customers and prospects more intimately, more deeply so that you can
respond to them better.

The above are usually considered to be "vague objectives" and are often not approved by marketing vice
presidents. I suspect that many product managers and marketing research people are uncomfortable
initiating such requests because they think they will look foolish. But many great products and marketing
campaigns have come out of just such groups. Procter & Gamble, I'm told, knows more about how
people feel about soap, washing, and cleanliness than most pharmaceutical companies know about how
physicians feel about medications, sampling, patients, and disease.
So, don't "settle" for focus groups. Raise your expectations, and everyone else's (including your
supplier's), by stressing the positive values that you hope to get out of the group. Also, don't refrain from
doing groups just because your objectives are not narrowly focused.
Pitfall #2: Not being ambitious enough in your objectives.
Similar to doing focus groups out of default is not having ambitious enough objectives. You can get a lot
more from focus groups than top-of-mind beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and practices of respondents.
Focus groups are a laboratory in which you can get to much deeper feelings, implicit beliefs, hidden
attitudes and secret practices. But more importantly, focus groups are a laboratory in which you can
experiment with going beyond the present to what can be, beyond the is to the can and ought to be: You
can discover how to change beliefs and behavior, how to persuade, how to teach, how to communicate.
Focus groups are persuasion design laboratories in which you can develop and test new approaches.
Pitfall #3: Too few groups
Recently, another research company wanted me to find out the aspirations, hopes, wishes and fears of
women professionals, such as lawyers, physicians, accountants, etc. They wanted to know their present
life styles, how they spend their leisure time, where they will be shifting their priorities and what types of
products and promotional themes would appeal to them in the coming years. Wow! A "Meaning of Life"
study, as another qualitative researcher has called it. Just the kind of project that qualitative researchers
dream about. "How many groups did the client have in mind?" I asked. They answered, "One group."
Needless to say, such an ambitious project could not be accomplished in a dozen sessions. [I ended up
recommending a telephone focus group of experts in women's issues, as a first step and general
orientation.]
Now, this is an admittedly egregious example of "one-groupitis." I'm reminded of the old Texaco ad with
Jack Benny finally becoming convinced to try their gasoline. He says, "OK, I'll try a gallon." But lesser
examples are the norm rather than the exception. Clients continually want to do one group in a "cell,"
that is, of a particular kind of participant, or mix groups of very different people. They don't understand
that the first group will usually go for breadth, and the next ones will zero in on what is found and get
into increasing depth. Unfortunately, many clients have never heard depth in focus groups, so they don't
know what they are missing. In a pair of groups, usually 80% of the value is in the second group. In
three identical groups, usually about 60% of the total value is in the third group.
Pitfall #4: Too much attempted in each group.
Similar to the previous pitfall. The largest number of questions I have ever had submitted to me to cover
in a single group was 72. Other moderators tell me they have had more submitted. While this is extreme,
I would say that about 90% of the time the quality of the information is hurt by trying to do too much in
each group. For example, five minutes before the end of a particularly jam-packed-with-issues group of
oncologists, a client sent me a note asking me to ask how they decided between anti-cancer agents in
general. Anyone who knows the field knows that there are many different kinds and stages of cancers,
that agents are not given alone, and that decisions are not made about single agents but about regimens
and protocols, which are highly complex. To answer the question, an entire group would have to be
devoted to it, and replicated several times. I was so flabbergasted that I actually asked the question and
got rather coherent answers, the kind of answers that a television interviewer would have gotten. The
client was satisfied, and thought that they got a useful answer. Because I have explored this question in
depth in many other groups, I knew that the answers were superficial, misleading, and extremely
incomplete; they would certainly not prove too useful. It was very difficult to convince the client that
there were many more fundamental answers, and that the issue was far more complex than it seemed.
The maximum number of issues that can be addressed in a group is one to three, with sub-issues under
each. Typical guides contain 6-10. There must be a compromise in quality when you try for this much in
a group. I realize that the one to three figure may be shocking to most clients, and that there are budget
and time constraints, and I'm certainly willing to work out the trade-offs. But these decisions should be
made consciously, not by trying to cram as many topics into each group as possible in a misguided
attempt to increase the value of the sessions. Mies Van Der Rohe could have been talking about focus
groups when he said, "Less is more."
Pitfall #5: Groups too large.
The ideal group size for both face to face and telephone groups is about 7 or 8. Any more than that and
people start relating to each other collectively instead of individually. People with divergent thoughts can
hide. In a misguided attempt at getting a more representative sample, hearing from more people and
just getting the numbers up, clients often want 10 or more in sessions. This causes higher interaction,
especially for less experienced moderators. But the group tends to be more superficial, unless the
moderator knows how to get into greater depth with the higher numbers.
Pitfall #6: Not enough flexibility, latitude allowed.
There is an implicit view among many clients that the moderator's job is to walk participants through the
guide sequentially, and as expeditiously as possible. There is not enough time left for the kind of
serendipitous information that is so valuable in focus groups. Nor is there enough time for getting into
more depth and detail, finding deeper motivations, verifying the information that you do get, etc. These
things are the richness that focus groups offer, but there is seldom enough time. Again, most clients have
never heard real depth, so they do not know what they are missing. I wish that I had the guts, and that I
had a client who also had the guts, to let me go into some groups with only one question, without a
guide, and let me see what I could get. I suspect that we would be amazed. I know that in the times
when I do have some flexibility, the groups are much more productive, even though there is more
pressure on me. It might interest you to know that Ted Koppel does not go onto Nightline with a preset
guide, not even a first question. The main key to his skill is that he knows how to listen better than any
other broadcast interviewer.
Pitfall #7: Failure to inform supplier of purpose of project.
This one, fortunately, is relatively rare. Some clients labor under the mistaken belief that the moderator
will be more objective if he or she is not informed of the purpose of the sessions. I have one client who
routinely does not even tell its own market research department what use it plans to make of the
information. There are so many directions to go at every point in a focus group that I can't imagine how
this client expects to get the information it wants. They claim they do, and I find it hard to argue with a
client that claims that its needs are being met, but I am sure that I could take the value of their research
to another level if I only knew what I was doing for them and why I was doing it. Also, if you can imagine
how difficult it is to conduct the groups, imagine how difficult it is to do the analysis and write the report!
I don't know if I am supposed to be uncovering hidden needs, assessing present practices, determining
the level of knowledge of participants, generating new product ideas, developing promotional themes, or
just giving them a feel for the terminology of the field. I'm sure it's different in each case.
This is another extreme example to make the following point clear: work with your researchers to give
them as much information as possible. Yes, it will influence what is stressed in the sessions, but that is
what you want. A good moderator will go into groups with hypotheses, which he will not allow to turn
into biases. He will check out findings from many different directions, and has no vested interest in
pushing any particular point of view.
Pitfall #8: Using amateur moderators
Focus group moderating looks easy and is highly lucrative. It is, therefore, a magnet for people who have
attended many focus groups and who fancy themselves good with people. It's the logical thing to do
when a research director gets fired, and some are even good at it. The truth is that it is pretty easy to
run a group discussion: to get people started, to keep them on the subject, to keep the discussion
moving, to bring out the people who are not participating, to inhibit the dominators, to bring people back
to the subject when they stray, and to move them along to the next subject when they run out of steam.
Although I have sometimes seen these things done pretty ineptly, they really are not very hard to do. But
the mechanics of running a discussion is only a small part of what a qualitative researcher does. It is a
necessary condition, background against which the real work gets done. I have prepared a detailed
article outlining in depth what a good qualitative researcher does, which will be out shortly, so I won't try
to cover the same ground here. But I would like to emphasize that the qualitative researcher has to use
the group dynamics to help people to get to deeper levels of meaning, to verify in different ways that
he/she is getting the true story, must keep track of different motivations, and much much more.
The competencies of a focus group moderator are somewhat akin to that of a psychotherapist. I have
been both, so I can speak from experience. Many people can function as pretty good amateur therapists:
they can listen sympathetically, and get people to discuss their problems. But that does not mean that
they will be able to get to the levels that will produce change, or that they will know what to do when
they get there. There are a lot of ineffective therapists with fancy degrees. Patients can be taken in for a
long time before they realize that they are feeling some temporary relief, but they are not getting better
in any fundamental way. Similarly, focus group moderators are paid handsomely to know how to sort out
what is important, to understand implications, to decode symbolism, to unravel complex situations, to
interpret ambiguous behavior, to develop strategies, to generate and develop new ideas, to design
persuasion, to predict behavior. They not only have to be superb psychologists, sociologists,
anthropologists (disciplines from which most of the best moderators come), but they must be superb
marketers. You have to go through a hundred or two product launches and another hundred or two new
marketing campaigns to see what really moves people.
The fact is that for routine focus groups, any moderator will do. The problem is that there are virtually no
routine focus groups. Almost every group that seems routine turns out to have something in it that takes
major skill to sort out. Groups typically come up with advertising themes, hot buttons, new phrases, and
new insights that tend to go right by most moderators and clients. Also, like a surgical operation, an
airplane flight, a trial, or any other complex endeavor, things can get complicated, or go wrong. They say
that an airline pilot's flights are long stretches of boredom, punctuated by moments of stark terror. I have
also heard that airline pilots earn their pay during about 17 critical seconds a year. But do you want to
trust your life to a surgeon, pilot or lawyer who is less than the best, just in case? Admittedly, focus
groups are not as dramatic as the above examples, and a focus group crash does not involve loss of life.
But getting to people's motivations, which is what most focus group work is all about, requires a great
deal of skill, for which astute companies are willing to pay fees comparable to top surgeons because they
know the value they get and how rare the skills are. An informal survey shows that top qualitative
researchers charge only about 10-25% more than middle level moderators, who also charge about 10-
25% more than novices.
Just a few words about companies doing their own focus groups with their own moderators. Aside from
the obvious problems with objectivity and internal politics, it isn't always a bad idea. (That's not what you
thought I was going to say, was it?) People on the inside have a feel for the product area, company
strategy, and history of the product that outsiders can rarely equal. However, unless they have the
requisite professional training and practice (not just a few courses) in one or more of the social sciences
(psychology, sociology, and/or anthropology), and unless they have a lot of experience, and unless they
do focus groups constantly and practice their skills, they are unlikely to attain the level of professional
skill that is necessary to do a first rate job. It is unlikely that they will ever go though enough product
launches, product positionings and re-positionings, concept tests, and other kinds of groups that will give
them the necessary baseline of experience, comparative judgment and perspective to be able to interpret
the data and make predictions. Those who do become first-rate focus group moderators tend to then
leave and go to suppliers, where they can often make more money than the marketing VP of the
company they left.

In summary

Here is a quick review, and some additional tips for improving the quality of your qualitative research.
Tip #1: Include your qualitative research consultant in the early planning stages of projects.
Tip #2: Call several researchers and see who has the best grasp of your problem.
Tip #3: Stay away from researchers who run formal groups.
Tip #4: Ask your researchers how they know that they are getting to the truth. Make sure that the
groups get to the authentic and core levels, rather than the superficial, games and defensive layers.
Tip #5: Get product managers to do more general exploratory sessions, rather than only focusing on a
specific, narrow problem.
Tip #6: Don't treat your consultants like suppliers. Make them a member of the team and treat
them as such. Often, they have more experience than the whole team put together. On the other hand, if
your consultant acts like a supplier, get another consultant.
Tip #7: Use focus groups not only to explore, and to ask specific questions, but to develop new ways
of approaching the marketplace. Be ambitious. Make the moderator work. Make them develop
solutions to problems, rather than just uncovering problems.
Tip #8: Run enough groups.
Tip #9: Get the important things in depth, rather than trying to cover everything you always wanted to
know about the subject.
Tip #10: Conduct true freewheeling discussions, rather than lock-step question and answer sessions.
Tip #11: Don't believe everything you hear. Check out everything, not just by replication. Use indirect
approaches, such as projective techniques.
Tip #12: Hire professionals. Hold them to high standards. Listen to them.

Getting to the Right Psychological Level in Your Focus Groups

Too many focus groups are conducted at a superficial level. They sound all right, with people relaxed,
interacting, even talking up a storm. They are producing the kind of "new stuff" that makes product
managers happy. But they are often sound and fury signifying nothing. Focus groups should be more
than polite chit-chat around a specific subject.
Too many focus groups are conducted not as spontaneous discussions, but by marching the participants
through the moderator's guide in a sequential manner: A question is asked, such as "What product(s) are
you presently using under these circumstances?" The participants then discuss their product usage until
the moderator senses that there is no more to be gained, or until the allotted number of minutes have
elapsed. The moderator then moves the group on to the next question, such as "Why do you use this
product?" Then, after an appropriate period of time, or after a few probes, moves on to "What would get
you to try a new product." You get the idea. My point is that the moderator is all too often moving people
from one superficial cluster of verbalizations to another, sometimes to the delight of the product
manager.
Don't get taken in: When you ask questions in groups, what you get back are verbalizations. These
verbalizations may or may not accurately reflect people's thoughts (beliefs, opinions, attitudes, ideas) and
emotions (desires, hopes, wishes, fears, angers). Ever since we were children, we have all learned to
respond to questions. We have been badgered by questions from parents, teachers, bosses, other
authority figures, friends, employees, and everyone else we interact with. What have we learned in all
those years? That when we give the wrong answer, especially to opinion questions, we can get in
trouble. So, we have learned to give the safe answer. Or at least the answer that is least likely to
incriminate us, or offend others, or create controversy, or make us or others look bad. Most of us try to
project a certain persona of intelligence, competence, and other attributes that we think people expect of
us. In other words, when answering questions, most people do not only answer on the basis of the truth,
but color their answer according to the impression they wish to create.
In order to understand what goes on in focus groups, and how to get more out of them, it is necessary to
understand, recognize and know how to deal with the levels on which people operate in groups.
There are five distinct levels. They often overlap, and people often fluctuate between adjacent levels with
rapidity.
The Superficial Level
The level of social chit-chat, of small talk. What goes on in the reception area, or at the beginning of the
group as people introduce themselves.
The Games Level
The level of social gambits, bluffs, one-upmanship and role playing. Where people try to outdo each
other, or try to create an impression of being a particular type of person. For instance, the ingenue, the
skeptic who can't be fooled, the sophisticate, the good-ol'-boy, the traditionalist, creative idea generator,
etc. Moderators and clients are often taken in by verbalizations which are nothing more than expressions
of these games, rather than true opinions of the issue at hand.
Defensive or Protective Level
People have a built in Defense Department. When they perceive anything that can possibly hurt them,
they go into a variety of defensive maneuvers designed to protect themselves. These defenses are
designed to protect people from feeling embarrassed, humiliated, rejected, ignored, or unimportant. Most
are attempts to enhance self-esteem. These defenses are usually disguised as rational, reasonable
responses, which sound quite articulate. However, they are not responses to the issue under discussion,
but are really reactions to the perceived threat. Again, many moderators and clients are fooled by these
defenses masquerading as reasons.
Some of the defenses most encountered in focus groups are rationalization, denial, projection, evasion,
diversion (smokescreens, red herrings), distortion and omission. For instance, if you ask a series of
groups of Porsche owners why they bought a Porsche, you will probably get a song and a dance in each
group about styling and engineering. You will probably have to go to indirect means to get to what a
Porsche does for an owner's self image and sense of masculinity. Similarly, if you query groups of
physicians about why they have started using a new drug, you may get the truth, but you may get high-
sounding medical rationalizations, when what is really driving them may be, for example, the excitement
of trying something new.
A large number of focus groups are conducted on this level. Groups or moderators who are inflexibly
formal, logical, strictly sequential, highly intellectual and left-brained are prone to this type of illusory
"clarity." When I open an area for discussion, I get a coherent set of answers. Often, when I start
probing further, the client sends me a note to move on. After all, he got his answer, and usually clearly
too. But human motivations are rarely so simple. If I get the chance to probe further, I usually discover
many deeper and more useful motivators.
Authentic Level
Open, real, candid, honest, genuine responses characterize this level. This is the level where people level
with you, where they give it to you straight, insofar as they can genuinely get in touch with their
thoughts and feelings (many motivations are not easily accessible). Through words, images, feelings,
non- verbals, they communicate where they are really coming from. This level is reached by creating an
atmosphere of psychological safety, group support, personal openness, and motivation to communicate
simply and directly. It is characterized by congruence. All levels of communication are consistent. The
verbalizations are energized with emotion and the non-verbals agree. When people are probed from
different directions, perhaps projectively, the picture they present is consistent, although people may
cluster with several different motivations.
Sometimes a tip-off that people are on the authentic level is that their motivations seem silly or trivial.
For instance, several drugs are prescribed not for their therapeutic efficacy, but so that the physician will
not be woken up by phone calls in the middle of the night. Some cancer regimens are prescribed because
the decision is more "restful," as one oncologist expressed it. In other words, the decision is less
controversial and easier to defend, even though preliminary data seems to show other regimens to be
superior. When you get to the authentic level, Porsche owners might tell you that they have earned the
right to have fun, without having to consider practicality. Others might be motivated by a heightened
sense of masculinity, or others by what people will think of them (successful, fun loving, macho, etc.).
Or, a completely selfish car ("For once in my life, I want to drive what I want to drive.") Maybe it's a
reward.
So, the authentic level is often just beneath the surface, but people may have trouble accessing or
expressing it, or may not want to express it unless the conditions are right.
Unfortunately, too many focus groups are conducted in a stilted, formal, focused, rushed manner which
makes the emergence of this type of material rare. In order for participants to express this kind of
authenticity, a relaxed, informal, non-judgmental atmosphere must be established. People must be willing
and able to say whatever comes to mind. They must be motivated to go a little deeper, without
threatening them.
It is sobering, and a little frightening to realize that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between
authentic and defensive verbalizations at face value. Inter- and intra-group verification procedures must
be used, such as indirect probes, projective techniques, coming at the issue from a variety of
perspectives in different groups, challenging the participants, playing devil's advocate, encouraging
divergent thought, etc. It is this type of verification and deepening process that makes qualitative
research so valuable.
The Core level
This level is the cluster of values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings which are usually not consciously accessible,
but which provide the most powerful motivations. These are the social mores, ethical standards, personal
passions, spiritual values, philosophical doctrines, self-esteem requirements, survival values and deep
personal needs which are often not in conscious awareness, and which people are reluctant to share.
These are what really move people. If you can tap into one or more of these in a meaningful way, you
will move people.
These are almost never tapped by focus groups, or any other kind of marketing research. Focus groups
have more chance than any other method of hitting core values, but most moderators are unequipped to
reach them, and most product managers have no patience for the kind of probing that is required to get
to them. Yet most great marketing campaigns have tapped core values, often ones that have accidently
come out of focus groups.
Unfortunately, most focus groups are conducted on the level of superficial, game-playing or defensive
verbalization. The more clear, sequential and logical they sound, the more the probability that the client
and the moderator are being bamboozled.
The answer to this problem is not "objective" survey research. Surveys tend to be the most superficial
and misleading of all research. Virtually no rapport is established, answers tend to be forced into
categories, depth probes are not possible, and there is little opportunity for reflective thought and deep
feeling. People say the first thing that comes into their minds, often what they want the interviewer to
hear. [An upcoming article on qualitative vs. quantitative research will go into more detail.]
Individual Depth Interviews are also not the answer. Contrary to the popular belief that individual depth
interviews are necessary for sensitive subjects, it is the group support in focus groups that enables most
people to say what they may be uncomfortable expressing.
Running more groups is not the answer, because you may only be getting consistent sets of
rationalizations. In other words, you may be verifying that people tend to send up the same smokescreen
consistently (i.e., reliability without validity).
The answer is to recognize that focus groups are interpretive research. Their value is highly dependent
on the interpreter. So, get an interviewer/interpreter, i.e., moderator who is experienced at hearing
between the lines of what is being said and is capable of helping participants get beneath the surface
using a variety of techniques. As I am fond of saying, for mundane focus groups any moderator will do.
However, there are no mundane focus groups. Do not use amateurs, do not use inexperienced people,
do not use people who are experienced but who are not extensively psychologically trained in clinical
psychology, group dynamics, communication psychology, and the psychology of problem solving, creative
idea generation and decision making at minimum. Good moderators, like good magicians, make it look
easy, simple and straightforward, but there is a lot you don't see. Unfortunately, there are a large
number of people who have been doing groups for years, who have much technical knowledge in their
field, who can get people talking, who can get people to come up with clear answers in groups, but who
don't check to make sure that the clear answers they get are not consistent rationalizations. These
people tend to be all logic, with little human sensitivity. They ask too many questions, and get too many
canned answers. They take these canned answers at face value, doing little to verify that they are
accessing the truth. (See my article "Getting Beneath the Surface in Focus Groups.")
I know that the above is self serving. It also happens to be true. Verify it yourself. Ask your researchers
(including me) how they know that what they are being told is true. What have they done to check out
what they are being told? What are their validity and reliability checks? On the other hand, in all fairness
to my fellow researchers, are you allowing enough time in the groups to verify what is being said, or
enough groups to come at the information from different directions? If I were to ask you and your
product managers if you believe everything you hear and see, you would all instantly say "No!" But that's
a defensive level verbalization. Look at your actions (which do speak louder than words). Are you
insisting on verification? If, in effect, you are saying "Ask the question, listen, and move on," you are
being much more gullible than you like to think you are. Think about it. Let's talk about it, especially in
the context of your next research problem

Concept “Testing” in Focus Groups

Concept testing” is probably the most valuable and challenging application of qualitative research.
Although it is subtle, complex and difficult, it can be de-mystified and clarified into a set of principles. I
believe that this is the first time that anyone has set forth the foundations of concept testing.
What it is
Concept testing is the attempt to predict the success of a new product idea before it is marketed. It
usually involves getting people’s reactions to a statement describing the basic idea of the product. As
such, it is usually pass/fail, go/no go. As I will explain later, this is usually a very good way to kill a
concept. A much more fruitful approach is Concept development: the gradual refinement of new ideas
into a form that is most likely to be accepted in the marketplace. It not only gives promising ideas a
fighting chance, it provides guidance for the communication of benefits, uses, packaging, advertising,
sales approaches, product information, distribution, and pricing.
A risky undertaking
• This is a risky undertaking for several reasons:
• People cannot be expected to know or tell you how they would behave in the future, especially
in hypothetical situations where the product isn’t even developed.
• People are often skeptical of new ideas, and occasionally hostile to them. Radically new products
shake up people’s established way of doing things, putting them at or over the edge of their own
incompetence. So, new ideas are unsettling at best and a threat at worst. People often do not
have the imagination to see how the new product would benefit them.
These people are not likely to receive a new product with open arms.
For these reasons, even “obviously” good ideas which were ultimate successes, like automated teller
machines, extended battery-life pacemakers, VCRs, and many once-a-day medications had major
problems when they were first described to people in the concept testing stage of development. New
product ideas presented in the form of a half-page concept statement run a terrible risk of being killed
prematurely.
It can be done right
Concept testing is sometimes practiced rather naïvely. All too often, a couple of focus groups are
assembled, read a simple description of the concept and people are then asked for their reactions. This
approach is not only naïve, it is dangerous. How many wonderful, underdeveloped, defenseless concepts
were killed when a few groups of people mugged them with brutal criticism in the dark alley of concept
testing?
How to do it right
Concept development is a very powerful tool when done right. It has saved hundreds of millions of
dollars. It will let you avoid false starts, wrong positionings, poor strategy and selling to the wrong
people. It is not only vital insurance, but more importantly, it guides you throughout the entire
development process—from initial concept to successful launch.
Principle #1: An idea is not a product.
All too often, people forget that the idea is not the product. This seems obvious, but believe me it’s not ï
especially for people who are intimately involved with the product. It is disastrous to believe that a new,
superlative product will sell itself. You have to see your product from the point of view of your customers.
A new product is unsettling to most people. It usually requires a new way of doing things.
Principle #2: For an idea to become a viable product, it must be more than just superior.
People only change to new products when they perceive that there is a significant gain. People have to
believe it is more valuable than the money, time and comfort that they will have to give up in order to
purchase it. You have to convince people that: it will ultimately be an improvement over what they have
now, it is worth changing from what they already have, there is a relatively simple way to verify its
superiority, that it will live up to its promises, plus a whole host of other issues. Marginal improvements
rarely succeed in displacing a market leader. (I have developed the Decision Map(tm) to show the steps
that must occur for someone to go from not knowing about a product, to becoming an enthusiastic user.)
Principle #3: It is not what you know your product is, but what others think it is, that
determines product acceptance.
Even the most straightforward product will be perceived differently by different people. It can be seen
from various perspectives, used for a variety of purposes, in different contexts, with different
expectations. So, you can’t develop a product only on paper. For most products you must develop a
prototype, to work out the inevitable bugs, because a product exists in the real world, not just in theory.
In addition, your product must survive not only in the real world, but in psychological realty, i.e. the
world as perceived by people ï as filtered through their beliefs and emotions. You must be people
driven, not product driven.
Principle #4: To develop your product in the psychological world, you need a psychological
marketing laboratory.
A laboratory is a safe place in which to try new things. There has been no better laboratory invented for
new products than focus groups. Because people are motivated to communicate in focus groups, an
experienced moderator can infer what is going on in their heads and hearts. What they say is important,
but how they say it, what is behind what they say and what is not said is also just as important. Surveys
of people voting on whether or not they would use the product are usually very misleading.
Principle #5: Concept “testing” should be a development process, not a pass/fail test.
A test is something that passes or fails, or that gets a score. As I have already mentioned, you can’t take
a fragile new idea and bounce it off a bunch of people. It will usually shatter. Concepts must be
developed and nurtured. Concept development is a more accurate name for the process than concept
testing.
Principle #6: Concept development is a process of successively refining, amplifying and
enhancing the basic idea of the product.
While concept development is often conducted haphazardly, it can and should be a highly organized
process:
1. Assess the present situation.
You must thoroughly understand what people are doing now. You want to know their present satisfaction
levels, whether they perceive a problem for which your product may be a solution, and what are their
present beliefs, misconceptions, attitudes and emotions. Look particularly for the issues that they have
the most energy around, rather than what they tell you is important. You want to know the words they
use, and the way they categorize and conceptualize the area. More often than not, people will not make
the same distinctions and discriminations the manufacturers make. Users’ concepts will be much more
use and function oriented. The manufacturers’ concepts will be more product and feature oriented. I can’t
stress enough that respondents’ actual words, perceptions and felt needs are what you are after. You can
only take people from here to there. So, you better know where “here” is.
Sometimes people say that they don’t need the product when it is the kind of product that solves a
problem that they don’t see, or are embarrassed about or don’t want to acknowledge. If so, it doesn’t
mean that your concept is dead. You just have to get them to see or acknowledge the problem.
Sometimes, you come up against product rejection when the respondents take professional pride in their
ability to overcome the difficulties that your product will eliminate. Some examples are: automatic
cameras for professional photographers, or surgical staples and glues ï surgeons pride themselves on
their knot tying dexterity ï prepared anything (when the preparation is part of the professionalism),
programmed instruction for teachers and simplified (Macintosh or Windows) computers for computer
professionals.
Many concepts have been killed when such situations were discovered. But what this really means is that
other benefits must be found. If your new concept indeed represents a significant advance, it must be
clearly communicated.
2. Write the concept statement.
This step is the most difficult. The way the concept is presented is crucial. There are two pitfalls to be
avoided:
(1) Don’t make the statement just a straightforward “objective” description of the features of the
product.
(2) Don’t make the statement too “salesy.” Instead, a balance must be struck between a dry spec sheet
and a slick brochure.
You do this by starting with a brief description of the present situation, in words the target audience
uses. It is usually best to describe the concept as a solution to a problem. For instance to physicians:
“You know how hard it is to get ‘patient compliance’ [physicians’ words] with your recommendations...”
Or, “You know how frustrating X is...” Then, continue with the product description in benefit terms: “So,
my client has developed a..., which is designed to..., without causing ...[undercutting a qualm]” Then,
and only then, describe the product itself, and how the product’s claims will be substantiated.
Make it as real as you can, but if something is hypothetical or undeveloped about the product, mention
this. Then, ask for their guidance in making the concept viable.
3. Refine and elaborate the statement in successive groups.
The concept statement is written and rewritten, for successive groups, continually taking into account
what has been learned before. Each time it is presented, you will elicit qualms, objections and concerns
as well as praise, new uses and new ways of describing it. You take the positives and incorporate them
into the concept statement. With the negatives, you look for ways to underplay them or turn them into
benefits. This comes from the creativity of the researcher and the client. We find out directly from
participants how we can make the product more appealing. We continue to strengthen the presentation
of the concept. You will find that you have almost developed a sales presentation even before you have
an actual product.
HOW TO CONDUCT THE SESSIONS
Principle #7: The psychological atmosphere of the group is as important as the concept statement itself.
Tell participants clearly what the task is, how you want them to approach it, and make it desirable and
safe to do so. Set up an atmosphere of psychological safety, trust and constructive helpfulness. Make it
clear that they are there to help you develop the basic idea into something genuinely useful to them. You
want their suggestions and constructive criticisms.
You are interested primarily in their reactions, not as much in how they think other people would feel,
although the latter also can be helpful.
Certain kinds of people, particularly physicians, have been trained to think scientifically, but not
hypothetically and creatively. If the concept is an undeveloped idea, make it clear that you will be asking
them to make certain assumptions without supporting data.
The point here is that you have to make it safe for people to think creatively and hypothetically.
Otherwise, you run the risk of people saying, “How can we comment before we know the exact
characteristics of the product?”
In order to further encourage psychological comfort, I stress how important it is for them to express any
dissenting opinions or contrary experiences, even if they are a minority of one. It is important to the
client to hear any negatives that exist. So, I am perceived as a neutral third party with no vested interest
in anything other than an accurate and thorough discussion. In other words, make it OK to express
different views.
Principle #8: The role of the researcher in concept development is highly creative.
The job of the researcher in concept development is not only analytical, but extremely creative. The
researcher’s mission is not just to dissect what is, but build what can be.
The first groups usually start out skeptical
Almost every good concept starts off with strong skepticism, which can be devastating to the client
unless the process is understood. Sometimes concept testing is unfortunately stopped at this initial flood
of objections. However, objections are actually desirable, because in the first sessions you want to
understand people’s concerns. In fact, I am very suspicious in the rare cases of concepts which are
extremely positive from the beginning. I worry that the participants are getting carried away by the
enthusiasm of the moment, and are not realistically considering usage questions. That’s when I play
devil’s advocate and make them sell me.
Feed back the comments of earlier groups to new groups.
As successive groups begin to become more positive, bring up the negatives encountered in former
groups and ask them how they would answer such objections.
Pay particular attention to opinion shifts.
When a participant changes from positive to negative or vice versa, make sure that you find out why.
Often, this will provide you with the key to making the concept work.
Watch for “Hot Buttons” and “Achilles’ Heels”
Occasionally, you will find something about the product which is so positive or negative that it
overwhelms all other issues.
The most important positive response you can get to a new concept is the “Aha response.” When you
describe the concept, people say “Aha, that’s what I need.” It is often accompanied by a sort of satisfied
laughter. It is exactly the same gratifying realization that people get when they make any kind of
discovery, or hear a joke with a message to be learned. You’ve hit a hot button.
For instance, I have worked with some medical products which physicians immediately believed would
become “standards of community care.” They believed that they would have to use the product to defend
against the malpractice risk of not using it. While situations like this are the dream of every product
manager, these cases are extremely rare.
On the negative side, I can think of several Achilles’ Heels which made further development of products
inadvisable. The reason that something is an Achilles Heel is usually because there is a fundamental
contradiction inherent in the product which cannot be designed around. One was a bank check which
would allow people to write in several payees at the same time. So, you could pay your rent, car
payment, and several credit cards with the same check. This idea ran up against peoples’ practice of
waiting a period of time before paying bills or writing checks before they had transferred funds into their
account. There was no way at the time to design around this problem, so the concept was killed. Another
time, a particular packaging was designed for unit dose ophthalmic products which could be used during
eye surgery. The product was not able to be opened under operating room conditions by the ophthalmic
surgeons, who are among the most dexterous people alive! An entirely new package concept had to be
developed.
Principle #9: Plan a sufficient number of groups to refine the concept
The kind of development process I have been describing usually requires 4-12 sessions, depending on
how many market segments are involved. But the attitude, “Lets just run one or two focus groups and
see if we have anything,” is usually asking for trouble.
I was asked by the ad agency of one of the largest banks in the country to test the idea for the first
automatic teller machine in New York City. They wanted to do it on one group, but didn’t really know if
they were testing a card, a machine or a service. I recommended six groups because of the complexity of
the issue.
The first two groups were among the most negative I have ever conducted, as only New York groups can
be. The participants attacked the concept, the bank and banks in general. When I went into the client
room after the second session, it was like going to a funeral, which is exactly what it could have been
(for the concept). I pointed out that the session went exactly as I predicted. I told them what we had
really learned and together we were able to successfully reposition the concept for the next groups. We
put into the concept statement a guarantee that the bank would rectify mistakes, a security code the
bank employees themselves couldn’t access, a phone to speak to a human, a friendly screen (“computer”
was a dirty word in those days). The next two sessions became more positive as we kept learning.
We then took all that we had learned in the first four sessions an essentially wrote a brochure offering
this service to the next two groups. At the end of these sessions (the 5th and 6th) people were so positive
that they wanted me to sign them up immediately, or put them on a preferred list as a reward for being
in the research!
The bank felt confident enough to install the machines and get a jump on the competition in this highly
competitive industry. They could not put them in fast enough.
If we had viewed this as a concept test, rather than concept development, and conducted only the first
one or two groups, you can see what could have happened.
Principle #10: Include influencers, not just the ultimate users
Your product often has to be “bought” psychologically first by someone else than the person who
ultimately buys it. Your concept may live or die by the recommendations and word of mouth influencers
such as medical experts and specialists, purchasing managers, distributors, department store buyers,
store clerks, engineers, hospital administrators, and even insurance underwriters. The video tape
recorder is one example, The Holter Monitor is another (see Case Studies section).
Principle #11: Use a consultant who is skilled in concept development
For concept work, you want someone who has been through enough successful product introductions
and seen enough failures to have a basis of comparison. This usually requires many years. The
moderator should have extensive experience in creative idea generation sessions, using a variety of
methods, particularly CPSI, Synectics, Morphological Synthesis, Brainstorming, and the like. Such
experience will allow the moderator to get the participants to modify parts of the concept which are not
working.
PITFALLS TO AVOID
Product rather than market, orientation.
Using an inside moderator, or moderator inexperienced in concept development.
Testing, rather than developing.
Testing things that can’t, or shouldn’t be tested, like some (definitely not all) personal products, products
which must be experienced but can’t be produced in prototype, or ideas which are so vague that they
cannot yet be communicated meaningfully.
Not doing concept development until it is too late to do anything about it. Particularly true in the
pharmaceutical industry where many products are tested after the clinical trials are committed to. Here,
concepts should be developed prior to and during clinical trials.
Not giving the concept enough of a chance.
Taking votes for the purpose of projecting whether the concept will be successful (there are other
legitimate reasons for votes). You can project from groups, but you must do it on the strength of the
opinions, the logic of the statements, and the other factors previously mentioned.
Taking what people say at face value. Be careful of reactions like “This will be a big seller among X’s, but
I wouldn’t buy it.” Or, “I’d buy it, but no one else would.”
CASE STUDIES
The following examples illustrate these principles.
Medical devices - Principle #1
Most new medical devices contradict the established way of doing things rather dramatically. In any such
situation, it is very important to understand the sources of pride and other benefits of doing things the
old way.
The IBM Jr. and the IBM Convertible - Principle #1
The IBM Personal computer was one of the greatest business successes of all time. But their introduction
of the PC Jr. and the Convertible were amazingly short of what consumers wanted. These monumental
setbacks would probably have been avoided, and possibly turned into a success, with better concept
development work. Don’t think that a series of smashing successes guarantees anything for your next
product.
The joggers stopwatch - Principle #1
The first digital jogger’s stopwatch was a great idea - except that you could not switch from the
stopwatch mode to see the real time, without wiping out the elapsed time on the stopwatch function. So,
a jogger could not tell what time it actually was, only how long he/she had been running. The execution
of the concept is as important as its abstract description. Also, it often pays to concept test your
competitors’ products. You can often find a fatal flaw in an otherwise good concept, which is easily
correctable.
Buccal tablets - Principles #2 & 10
These are tablets which are placed between the upper gum and the cheek, in the “buccal cavity.” The
tablet slowly releases its drug over a period of hours directly into the small blood vessels in the gum. It is
one of many “new drug delivery systems,” designed to bypass the stomach, where many drugs are
destroyed. The need for this type of system is unquestioned, especially for the very large and fragile
molecules of the newer bioengineered drugs. The first drug to use that system was believed by
physicians to be unacceptable to patients, even though the few patients who were on it, loved it. There
were several flaws in how the product was demonstrated, which the company was not aware of. Make
sure that there isn’t an unsold segment of the marketplace, who can kill the product. Also, how the
product will be demonstrated is an integral part of the product and should be carefully considered.
The Lisa - Principle #2
When Apple Computer’s Lisa was introduced, telephone groups of non competing computer store owners
were conducted (not for Apple). The participants were very positive toward the Lisa and thought that it
would be a smashing success. However, they were unable to support their response with a reason that
made sense and could not justify its price. I concluded that their “positive reaction” was nothing more
than a “Gee Wiz” reaction expressing amazement over the technological achievements of the machine.
They clearly would not be able to sell it to their customers on that basis. It was clear that the machine
would be a failure, but that a much cheaper version would be a success. The Lisa (which failed) was
subsequently turned into the Macintosh, a tremendous success. The enthusiastic unsupportable
acceptance of the concept should not be interpreted as a positive outcome in the case of major
purchases.
Multiple payee check - Principle #2
A bank check with multiple payees. It contradicted peoples’ fundamental practices of check writing. While
convenience is a very powerful benefit and wins more often than not (the Instamatic camera, frozen
meals, etc.), it doesn’t win when it is in direct opposition to inherent preferences.
Diagnostic tests - Principle #3
I have worked with several diagnostic tests which excited physicians for reasons other than the uses for
which it was designed. What could be more straightforward than a test that will confirm whether
someone has a disease? But sometimes the tests were not perceived as necessary for making the
evaluation. Instead, the tests were perceived as helping to decide whether to use more expensive tests
and treatments, how aggressively to pursue treatment and which drugs to use. The lesson here is that as
much attention should be paid to the perceived uses of the product as to its original intended use.
Enuretic device - Principle #3
A device which was to be worn by bed-wetters. It was perceived as having a potential for electric shock.
There were other aspects of the product which were also perceived as offensive, punitive and degrading.
Pediatricians were so offended by the product that it was clear that no amount of persuasion could have
sold it. Initial perceptions can (rightly or wrongly) make it impossible for people to listen to any
subsequent persuasion.
Unit dose ophthalmic - Principle #4
To simulate actual use, we requested physicians to wear their standard surgical gloves for the product
test. They could not open the package. If you can’t test under actual conditions, try to simulate them as
closely as possible.
A prepared dessert - Principle #4
After being tested in standard laboratory test kitchens with consumers, the dessert was tested in the real
world for in-home use. We had the dessert delivered to peoples’ homes and asked them to serve it to the
family as dessert for that evening’s meal. The housewives then participated in a telephone focus group
immediately afterward. While they agreed that the dessert tasted wonderful and contained no
preservatives, it broke down in consistency under household conditions, making it runny and watery.
Mothers are not going to take the care and effort in serving desserts to a busy family that they do
operating in test kitchens. Concepts which require demonstration should be demonstrated under actual
usage conditions.
ATM’s (Automated teller machines) - Principles #5 & 6
Described previously. Illustrates need to not make it a pass/fail test, but a development process. Also to
allow enough groups to develop the concept from negative to positive.
A new kind of antibiotic - Principle #7 & 8
In this case we went to typical physicians. They liked the concept, but “damned it by faint praise” When
pressed, they really saw little need for it. By creating the proper atmosphere in the group, we were able
to encourage them to speculate on other uses of the drug. They mentioned their frustrations in treating
infections in a particular organ system, which was not an anticipated first indication for the drug. It
turned out that the drug was extremely effective for that infection. In subsequent groups, they said that
they would use it for the infection in question. It turned out that it was this new use that drove much of
the initial interest in the drug. The lesson here is that you must listen for and build on what is not said,
and what is said in passing (or as a joke), as much as listening for the main content of the session.
A cold preparation - Principle #9
We once worked with a cold preparation which had a different form than the usual tablet, lozenge or
liquid. However, my client, a pharmaceutical firm, was not in the consumer end of the business. Because
we planned enough groups, we were not only able to see that the concept was a winner, but that the
marketing would need a highly specialized packaged goods approach, involving extensive positioning
work and unusual advertising, which was not their primary expertise. We recommended that they sell this
outstanding product opportunity to an OTC pharmaceutical company, who would be better able to
capitalize on it. A winning product can be a loser in the wrong company.
Holter Monitor - Principle #10
The Holter Monitor is a portable electrocardiogram machine which is worn for 24 hours, providing a
continuous record. The resulting output can be analyzed to detect cardiac arrhythmias (irregular
heartbeats). When we brought together the country’s leading cardiologists to first hear about the ideas in
several telephone focus groups, they went wild (the“Aha respons”). They told us exactly how to design
the unit, what pitfalls to avoid and what clinical studies should be provided. The lesson here, again, is to
go to people who will drive the acceptance, and even more importantly, to go to them early enough to be
able to do the right homework ï clinical studies in this case.
VCR’s - Principle #8 & 10
We were asked if we could help circumvent the initial unsuccessful introduction of the VCR’s. This may
seem unbelievable now. We conducted telephone focus groups of buyers and top salespeople from high-
volume retailers to understand why this revolutionary technical breakthrough was meeting such
resistance. The manufacturer was focusing more on the technology than the application. Talking to the
salespeople directly provided us with a consumer perspective. These people were uninterested in our
marvelous technology, but pointed out that we had to help them sell it to their customers, the consumer.
TV programs are usually not a valuable asset to be preserved. VCR’s were originally positioned to allow
people to record television shows and play them over and over. Not very exciting. In the words of one
salesperson,“Who wants to save garbage?”
Most people watch television and accept whatever is on. This “take what you get” constraint of TV turned
out to be the opportunity. When I asked the buyers and salespeople, how they would sell a video tape
recorder to me, they said that they would sell it as something which would allow me to watch whatever I
wanted when I wanted to, then reuse the tape, not save it. The concept of viewing-time option was born,
together with greater selectivity. Selectavision was the brilliant name conceived of later. Incidentally, the
salespeople joked that it would help if X-rated movies were also available. As you know, it was these two
forces that drove the tremendous acceptance of the VCR: viewing-time option and X-rated movies.
The lessons to be learned here are: you must go to the people who are likely to know how to turn the
idea into a successful product. Also, many a true word is said in jest.
Generic drugs - Principle #10
Some concepts are already on the market when they are reevaluated as concepts. In the early seventies,
generic drugs had been around for awhile. However, focus groups of key state legislators, pharmacists
and physicians revealed that it was an “idea whose time had come.” Physicians were still very much
against the idea, but it was clear that circumstances were such that an overwhelming consumer demand
would soon be created. The lesson here is that the prediction of the success of an idea also depends on
timing. In your files, you may find many ideas whose time had just not come ï then.
OVERVIEW - KEY POINTS
The following is what should come out of most concept development projects:
• Analysis of current usage patterns.
• Who the real target audience is.
• Under what conditions people will buy, prescribe and/or use the product.
• The psychological state people will have to be in to use the product.
• A description of the product which turns people on (the refined concept statement).
• The “hot buttons” for the product.
• The strategic positioning - its fundamental identity, how it will be described, what it purports to
be. I.e., what are you selling ï a bank card, teller replacement, 24 hour service, fast money access, etc.
• What kinds of substantiation, information and other material will people need in order to try it
and use it.
• Who will try it first, next, and so on.
• The type of trial.
I am sure you find new products and new product concepts to be extremely exciting, challenging and
rewarding. The proper application of these principles are designed to assist you in translating these new
product visions from dreams to reality.

How to Get Beneath the Surface in Focus Groups

What's the problem?

It should come as no surprise that you can't always believe what you hear in focus groups, or anywhere
else.
Some people still believe that any moderator who can put participants at ease will get them to talk
"openly," creating the "right atmosphere" where the truth will come pouring out. This attitude has all too
often led to findings which are clear-cut, simple, unambiguous and wrong.
Are the things people are saying when pressed in focus groups really what moves them? How do you sort
out the ambiguity, vagueness, omissions, contradictions, biases and irrelevancies of groups? Surely some
of the most important motivators cannot easily be put into words: they are feelings, attitudes, values and
beliefs that people may not be consciously aware of. How do you get beneath the surface to these
hidden motivators? How do you eventually come out with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth?
I have agonized over these issues for 26 years in thousands of groups. I still agonize over them in each
and every project I undertake.
Some people think that it's easy to verify the truth. They run several groups. If people keep repeating
what they found in previous groups, their findings are confirmed. This is the height of gullibility. Maybe
all they are getting are the same old lies over and over again! They confuse confirmation with
consistency.
It is not always easy to tell if people are giving it to you straight, and it is not always possible for people
to get in touch easily with their motivations. You have to have some means of allowing them to express
what might not be at the level of conscious awareness and of checking out what they tell you.
Why it's usually counterproductive to ask "Why" and other "motivational" questions
People are always asked in focus groups "Why do you use, or why did you buy" a particular product. Or
"What are your satisfactions and dissatisfactions with ...?" The answers you get back are often plausible,
even convincing. This is particularly true of business executives, engineers, and physicians, who tend to
make conscious, deliberative, rational decisions which they can explain with great clarity.
Surely, if you ask a physician why he/she prescribes Valium, he can tell you. He'll tell you that it works
better than the other tranquilizers, it has muscle relaxing properties, there is a little "rush" that reassures
the patient that it is working, and that patient compliance (taking the drug as directed) is high. But
maybe these are the reasons he originally switched to the brand 15 years ago. How are you going to
separate the reasons from the rationalizations?
Physicians are not going to be too eager to tell you that they are fearful of changing to a new drug, they
are worried about their patients going to another doctor if they don't prescribe what the patient wants,
that they feel acutely uncomfortable about counseling the patient and instead take the easier course of
writing a prescription, that old prescribing habits are hard to break, or that the whole area of
psychoactive drugs scares them so much that they don't dare do anything different from what the
overwhelming majority of other physicians are doing, even if they know it isn't right in a particular case.
Physicians will tell you these things, but only under the right conditions. And there are many techniques
for making it easier for them to tell you.
On the consumer level, drinkers of a particular kind of imported beer are not likely to tell you straight out
that they drink it because it helps them overcome feelings of masculine self doubt by letting them feel
more like a real man.
I'm not only talking about the area of deep, dark, mysterious and embarrassing motivations. Those are
relatively easy. How about the times when people simply don't know what they think about a product
category, or don't care enough to have thought about it. You ask why they bought a product and all you
get is a bunch of cliches. "Why did you buy that product?" "I like it." Probes elicit blank stares as their
eyes glaze over.
The way we usually get beneath the surface is to use "probes." But how do you know that the probes are
not eliciting rationalizations, rather than the real reasons?
How about categories in which people habitually lie to themselves? The automobile industry is a prime
example. People don't buy cars for the reasons they say they bought them. "Why did you buy your
Chevy" will get you a string of self justification that will make your head spin.

Why the truth is so elusive.

OK, I think I've made the point that people are less than forthcoming and that it is easy to get taken in.
Here, in a nutshell, are the reasons:

• People often do not understand why they are doing the things they are doing, and therefore
can't tell you. Their motivations are unconscious.
• Sometimes people are in touch with their reasons and their feelings, but they can't express them.
They don't have the language, or language is inappropriate. Maybe they just have a visual image
or a feeling they can't express.
• Even when they do understand why they are doing things, they often don't want to tell you.
• When they do tell you, they often don't tell you the truth, or the whole truth. Or, they tell you
more than the truth. The truth is often imbedded in irrelevancy.
• It is more important for most people to preserve their view of themselves than tell you why they
are doing what they are doing.
• Often people don't care to examine their motivations, or don't care about your product enough to
have given it any thought, or don't care enough to feel any emotions about it.
• There is rarely a single reason why a given person does something. Any simple, single act of
behavior is usually the result of many complex forces from inside and outside the individual.
• The same act of behavior can be motivated by different things in different people. Members of
the same group, performing the same task at the same time may have vastly different
motivations.
• The same person will do the same thing at different times for different motivations.
 • Some motivations, even if you find them out, are often irrelevant to marketing, in that you can
do little, if anything, about them. These may involve motivations based upon deep fears,
pathology or illegal activities.

When I was a psychotherapist, I came to appreciate how it can take highly motivated patients years to
dig out and to acknowledge important issues that are dominating their lives, issues that are sometimes
obvious to everyone else. It is usually even harder to dig out in a focus group, in a couple of hours,
things which are less evident, in a less motivated respondent, who isn't even the client.
Clearly, we need to find ways to help people get in touch with deeper motivations, help them find ways
to express this material, motivate them to do so and find ways to interpret what comes out. We need to
get beneath the surface.

Counterfeit solutions

Before we get to specific techniques, I want to talk about our responsibilities and possible abuses.
Keep in mind, we have a responsibility to our respondents. We have an implicit contract with them, even
though they themselves are not our clients. We have to treat them with respect and get their permission
to engage in various exercises. We have to allow them not to participate in a particular exercise, or to
refuse to reveal their thoughts and feelings. We have to protect them from ridicule, in fact bolster their
self esteem.
When I was training to be a psychotherapist, we spent a lot of time examining our motivations for
becoming therapists. We were particularly sensitive to the ways in which our becoming therapists might
be fulfilling any needs for voyeurism and power. Everyone has some of these tendencies. It takes
considerable soul-searching and training to prevent these tendencies from becoming important
motivators in the practice of either psychotherapy or marketing research. To the extent that they are, our
judgment will be clouded by irrelevant considerations, we will tend to violate people and be less effective
at our jobs. I hope that this does not sound moralistic and self-righteous. I hope you will seriously
examine your own motivations before using any of the following techniques, simply in order to be a more
effective researcher.
Another caution: use these techniques as tools, not as gimmicks. If you're a client, don't require a
moderator to use a particular tool just for the sake of entertainment. If you're a moderator, don't use
these techniques as stunts to impress clients. When a hammer is used to drive a nail, it's a tool. When
you balance it on your nose, it's a prop in a stunt and your research will suffer for it.
Also, I don't want to create the impression that the following special techniques should be used in every
group. I can go months without using any unusual techniques, then find myself using them in every
group of several projects. It depends on the objectives.
Don't get locked into one or two techniques. If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a
nail.
Keep in mind that these techniques are extremely entertaining to clients. It is easy to let the side show
take over the big top.

Techniques for going beneath the surface

Take the following methods as a stimulus for building your own repertoire of techniques for getting
beneath the surface. Some will seem way out, or won't fit your style or your kind of research. Rather
then rejecting them, ask yourself whether they can be changed into something more suitable for you.
The focus group technique itself
First of all, let's keep in mind that the focus group technique itself was developed as a way of getting
beneath the surface. The open-ended interaction of focus groups leads to stimulation of thoughts and
emotions, the revelation of material which is not ordinarily forthcoming in an individual interview, the
examination of how people in various roles interact, and the observation of important behavior.
So, the first cluster of techniques which will allow us to go beneath the surface are those techniques
which simply make for a better regular focus group - techniques which will facilitate interaction,
stimulation and revelation.
Running groups in the first place
Even in the face of their obvious advantages, sometimes focus groups are not used when they should be.
So, the first "technique" is to not rule out focus groups prematurely. Let me give you some examples.
When I conduct workshops, I often hear during case studies that a particular subject is "too sensitive" to
handle in focus groups, so that individual interviews are needed. Rarely is this correct. What is often
overlooked is that a sensitive moderator can take a sensitive subject and encourage group support to
make it easier for people to talk about the subject than if they were being interviewed individually.
Another reason for prematurely rejecting focus groups as desirable but unfeasible is the difficulty of
getting people into groups because they are difficult to identify, recruit or get to show up. They might be
low incidence, geographically dispersed, high level people, or competitors who ordinarily wouldn't come
to a focus group. Don't give up. Don't neglect getting to the higher level influencers, or the early
adopters, who may be more important than your regular customers. There are a variety of techniques for
reaching these people. Here are a few:
Invite from specialized lists.
List management has become extremely sophisticated. There is almost always a list of people available if
you use your ingenuity. List brokers, specialized recruiting firms, associations, etc. are sources. There are
directories of experts for almost every field. Data bank searches also yield the names of experts.
You can also invite from warranty cards, redeemed coupons, subscription lists, cancellation lists, and
inquiry cards. This is a great way of getting people who have just bought your product.
Network to get the right people.
Call people and ask them to refer the people you are after. As long as the purpose is legitimate,
physicians will refer patients, nurses and pharmacists (and vice versa), businesses will refer customers,
etc.
Use ads, radio commercials and flyers
There are many ways around the selection biases introduced by such unorthodox methods. Sometimes
the biases are irrelevant, such as for idea generation groups.
Run the groups in an alternate mode

Use telephone focus groups.

Their anonymity and safety open people up or bring together difficult to reach respondents.
See my paper "The Shocking Truth About Telephone Focus Groups" for more details.

Try mini-groups

These can often give you the best of all possible worlds: the stimulation of focus groups, with the ability
to probe deeply into the thoughts and feelings of just three or four people.

Unusual mixes and matches can sometimes break an issue wide open

For certain types of issues, you can mix into the same group: spouses, siblings, physicians and nurses
(but usually not ones who work with each other), bosses and employees, parents and children, users and
non-users, enthusiasts and rejectors. While it is usually undesirable to have these combinations in the
same group because of the defenses they often erect in each others' presence, there are other times
when "undesirable combinations" may either serve as foils for each other, or may engage in constructive
dialogue which gets you beneath the surface. Some of my best groups have resulted from combining
natural enemies. You can compare and mix apples and oranges: you get fruit, and fruitful results.
Have groups react to what was said in other groups
Once you are sure of what you have found in some groups, you can present your findings in other
groups, so that you can go on to the next level of depth.
Play tape excerpts from one group to another. This is particularly good when there are people who defer
to each other, rather than confront each other. For example, people usually won't argue with real, live
experts. But if you play tape excerpts, people will tell you exactly what they don't like about what the
experts are saying.

Participant preparation

The following methods of participant preparation can result in groups which reach greater depth.
Tell them what it's about beforehand
I have never understood why so many groups are conducted without telling people what they will be
talking about. In some cases this is desirable, but in most cases it is not. Many decisions are made with
conscious deliberation, over time, after talking with other people or in groups. I often want participants to
talk over usage patterns or new concepts with other people before they come to the group. Depending
upon my objectives, I may want to hear what other respected colleagues said to the participants, or what
questions they had, or whether they tried to talk them out of their original reaction. Think about the
possibilities of giving participants assignments before they come to the group.
Screen participants:
There are a large variety of ways to screen for:
Past participants
Opinion leaders
Participators
Optimists
Creative people
Yes, I know that this kind of screening is "unscientific" and "biasing." But we are usually not trying to get
a statistically representative sample of the universe. Maybe you are trying to zero in on a particular
segment of the marketplace, such as opinion leaders, or you are looking for creative ideas. One man's
bias is another man's sample.
Follow-up sessions
What is going to happen to the opinions expressed in your groups? Respondents will go out into the real
world and they will discuss your products with others. They will influence and be influenced. They will try
your products. They will change their minds. Some of the most fruitful groups I have conducted have
been where past participants have been invited back to a follow-up session a few weeks or a few months
later. Sometimes they are given an assignment: for instance, "if you like it, try to convince three friends
to use the product and try to remember what their objections were and what convinced them." Think
beyond the immediate: the focus group does not begin when the participants sit down in the room, nor
does it have to end when they leave the facility.

Apres group techniques.

Give participants the opportunity to express afterthoughts, or material they did not want to bring up in
the group.
Stick around at the end of groups. People will tell you things privately that are very valuable. I even give
them an 800 phone number to call me with further thoughts. Although I have only recently started using
the 800 number technique, it has already yielded some breakthrough information. For instance, after
some groups with a clients' sales representatives, some sales people called me up to tell me off the
record that they had not been telling me the complete truth, they were afraid to use a key piece of
promotional material because it contained apparent contradictions, and they were afraid to let anyone
know because their actual views would have been considered blasphemy and heresy by the Grand
Inquisitors (sales management).
If you are writing a report and wonder what a respondent meant by a remark, pick up the phone and call
him/her. Ask participants to clarify and expand upon what they said in the group.

The atmosphere of the group

There are a multitude of things that have a profound effect on the general conditions, mood, and climate
of groups. Attention to them will reap great rewards in the quality of material elicited. On the other hand,
I have seen many situations where inexperienced moderators ignored these issues, and doomed the
group even before it got started.
Put a lot of creative energy into the topic.
Nothing effects the acceptance rates, the show-up rates and the involvement of the participants as the
topic of the group as stated to the participants. The idea is to find a truthful topic which is of great
interest to the participants, which encompasses the research objectives, but which does not bias the
group or tell them more than is appropriate, given the research objectives. I routinely see acceptance
rates double and triple as I change the topic and subtopics slightly - and I'm very good at taking an
effective first cut.
For example, imagine that you were being invited to a focus group. Which group would you like to
attend? "Research Methods" or "New Advances in Research Methods," or "How to Conduct Research
which is Cheaper, Better and Faster," or "Ways People Have Found for Getting Beneath the Surface
Responses." It makes a difference, doesn't it?
Manage the group's expectations
Write the inviting script yourself, do not leave it up to a field service. Monitor some inviting calls to make
sure things are being handled in a professional manner. Make sure the script includes exactly what you
want participants to know and expect.
Write the confirming letter yourself. Make sure it tells people what to expect and what will be expected of
them, without giving away what you want to present in the group.
I have a one-page write up which explains to respondents just what market research is, what a market
research group discussion is, why it is in their interest to be open and frank, how to get the most out of
the session, and some do's and don'ts. Since I started using it, I find respondents are noticeably more
relaxed, participative and interactive. (You'll find it in the Appendix to my course "How to Moderate
Telephone Focus Groups.")
Every once in a while, ask a group to stay for a few minutes and give you feedback on the process,
particularly anything that struck them as odd or contradictory. You'll hear some interesting remarks.
The moderator's style as a tool
There are specific, practical things that the moderator can do about his or her style that can have a
dramatic effect on the depth of the group.
By style of the moderator, I mean the characteristic ways that a moderator interacts with the group, as
perceived by the participants. This is not always obvious to the moderator, client or even the participants.
I strongly urge any moderator who hasn't done so, to join a group dynamics laboratory to get some
feedback on how he or she comes across.
What's relevant here is that all that counts are the participant's reactions. I have seen vastly different
styles produce excellent results. I've seen "scatterbrained" moderators get people to fall all over
themselves to spill the beans in order to "straighten out" a moderator they perceived as "not getting it."
This is the "playing dumb" tactic which often works for topics in which the moderator is truly over his/her
head technically. I've seen it work equally well for mundane subjects like imported beers and for highly
technical ones like magnetic resonance imaging.
On the other hand, I have seen poor results from moderators who, on the surface, look very professional.
I've seen groups where the moderator was highly respected by the respondents, where the interaction
was high, and where the moderator and client were completely taken in by an elaborate system of
posturing and rationalizations by the respondents.
The point here is that there are a wide variety of styles that look bad but work, or that look good but
make respondents want to "fake it." Every moderator has many facets to his or her personality. It is
important to learn to let these out, in a manner which is appropriate to different types of groups. If you
saw me moderate salespersons groups, or children's groups, or consumer groups, you would never
believe that I conduct a large number of medical experts groups. On the other hand, if you heard me do
groups with experts, it would be hard for you to believe that I can conduct groups of non-experts.
What I want to emphasize is that it is not a matter of putting on an act, since respondents are quick to
spot phoniness. Every moderator has an intellectual side, and inquisitive side, a playful side, a stupid
side, and many other facets which should be used quite consciously as tools. The moderator should get
over his or her need to look a certain way. What matters is what opens up the respondents.

Use informality

While there are always exceptions, I find that a style of extremely informal, relaxed playfulness, coupled
with a professional seriousness of purpose (they are not the contradictions that so many people think)
works best for most moderators, certainly for me. I find that the worst moderating style is one of
formality, especially among inherently formal people like medical experts and bankers. These are exactly
the kinds of people who want and need the excuse to loosen up a little and willingly do so if given
permission by the example of the moderator. People reveal more when they are relaxed and having a
seriously good time, as long as the moderator does not trivialize the proceedings with gratuitous
nonsense. The key is the comfort of the moderator; if the moderator is not comfortable running a
serious, but informal session, he or she should not try to do so, since it will only come across as
ingratiating, forced or phony.

Use first names

High level groups, such as physicians, famous experts or company presidents, should always be
encouraged to participate on a first name basis. Don't start calling them by first names, that's
presumptuous. Simply state that we will be keeping things very informal and that you've found that
people are usually more comfortable and congenial if they go by first names. So, as they introduce
themselves, you'd like them to mention the first name they like to go by. I've done this with presidents of
Fortune 100 companies, congressmen, and Nobel Prize winners. If I ever get the chance, I'll do it with
heads of state. It makes a dramatic difference in the flavor of the group. People going by last names
make pronouncements and speechlets. They "concur with my esteemed colleagues." People going by first
names feel free to talk about how they do things which differ from what they have written about in their
own books.

The physical surroundings

I find the physical surroundings in most focus group facilities to be an abomination. The more elegant
they are, the more unnatural they look. I've never seen one yet that I wasn't sure made people feel "on
stage." They have been designed almost totally for the comfort of the client. Floor to ceiling one-way
mirrors, fluorescent lighting, microphones hanging down from the ceiling, conference tables, in malls and
office buildings. I feel like the kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Doesn't anyone see what's going on?
I don't believe for a minute that participants soon forget their surroundings and get into the discussion.
So far, I'm not aware of any hard evidence either way, but I believe that it's incumbent upon the people
who introduce such unnatural surroundings to show that it has an insignificant effect. I just know that I
observe much greater openness in non-mirrored rooms and telephone focus groups.
Eliminate unnatural physical surroundings!
The ultimate technique for using the physical surroundings to get to greater depth is to eliminate the
unnatural physical surroundings entirely: run telephone focus groups where respondents are in their own
homes. See my article "The Shocking Truth About Telephone Focus Groups" for more details.
When you have to run face to face groups, I personally prefer living room style seating, or informal hotel
suites. I'd rather have one or two clients in the room than have the artificiality of the mirrors. The Finns
have the right idea: I'm told they hold focus groups of mixed men and women, even physicians, in
saunas, naked. Talk about getting them to let it all hang out.
If you still insist on running groups the old fashioned way, here are a few suggestions. Meet the
participants in the waiting room, kid with them, get to know them, make them feel welcome. When you
get into the room, have them help you rearrange the furniture. For instance, have them help you move
the table(s) against the walls and sit in a circle. You've then already formed a group, performed a
common task, and established an atmosphere of relaxed informality. (The next group can move the
tables back.) If the first of two groups is a dinner group, do it the other way around.

Make it psychologically and physically safe

Anything which effects psychological safety will dramatically effect the depth of the group.
Psychological safety is a subtle thing. People must feel reassured and enhanced by their participation.
People will take risks if they feel safe in doing so. And participation is a risk. So people's feelings about
themselves must be safeguarded.
Encourage divergent thought
In your introduction, mention that you need to get as many diverse thoughts as possible. I usually say,
"if you find yourself having a totally different set of experiences, or a different opinion than the rest of
the group, I need to hear it, since you will be representing a sizable portion of the people out in the real
world who just didn't happen to be in the group tonight to support your view. So, I hope you will have
the fortitude to speak up. If you don't speak up, I'll be seriously misleading my client, since an important
view will not be represented."
Notice what the above does. Now, when they speak up, they will think of themselves as bravely
representing all the other people in the marketplace, helping the moderator to meet his responsibilities. It
also tells them why their opinions are important and that they are courageous for expressing them.
Reward the first divergent opinion with a comment like "I knew you all couldn't be agreeing about this.
Thanks for sharing that. Let's hear more."
Make it fun.
Anything that you can do which will make the group fun will tend to increase the feeling of psychological
safety.
Run them on the phone
Again, telephone focus groups are the ultimate in psychological safety. People are in their own natural
surroundings and can't even see each other. They cannot see grimaces or other facial expressions
indicating disapproval.
Make the participants feel good about themselves.
Why should they tell you things that are not socially acceptable and might make them look foolish or
ignorant?
They will do so if it is enough fun, or it is serving a higher purpose. For instance, you can have them tell
you the worst thing that ever happened in a particular situation, or when they felt most silly or helpless.
Some will start, find out that it is sometimes fun to laugh at oneself, and they will all try to top each
other.
I have found that I can get even physicians to tell me what they don't know by playing a game with
them. I explain that as a psychologist, I have been asked to help a company develop informational
materials. I further explain that physicians have been complaining to me for years that the materials
developed for them are usually off the mark and not very useful. The only way I can develop the right
kind of materials is to find out what they know and what they don't know and need to find out. So I will
be asking them a series of questions, or presenting some ideas to them, and they will probably want to
ask me questions. The game is this: I will answer the questions (or have an on-line expert answer the
questions) if they will first tell me what they think the answer is and what they would like the answer to
be. They have to be willing to reveal their areas of uncertainty, or even misconceptions, in order for me
to find the gaps in their knowledge which are worth filling in. There is no sense teaching them what they
already know.
The logic of the above is so compelling that physicians are willing to openly discuss their areas of
uncertainty. With high level specialists or experts, I add, "Nobody knows everything: as the island of
knowledge increases, so does the shoreline of ignorance."
Make it a group
It's not really a group until the participants start talking to each other. Encourage interaction. When that
fails, insist on it.

Encouraging interaction

You can insure interaction by asking people to talk to each other, not just to you.
Ask, as your first question, something which requires interaction, such as "I'd like you all to figure out
among yourselves what is the most effective course of action in the following circumstance." Or, "Figure
out among yourselves three reasonable ways to proceed in these conditions, and the pros and cons of
each. I'll sit back and listen for awhile."
If you are doing a "go around," letting each of them speak individually at the beginning, which I call
serial interview mode, explicitly tell them that you now need to switch to group discussion mode, in which
they will talk with each other more than with you. After asking the first question, sit back and make it
clear that you expect them to interact. Refuse to respond substantively to the first few questions, or you
will be reinforcing the pattern: participant 1, moderator, participant 2, moderator, etc. If there is a long
silence after a participant speaks, and you feel you must step in, say "I'm just sitting back to give you
room to talk among yourselves."
On two occasions, I had groups where the participants would only talk with me despite many attempts to
get them to talk with each other. Both groups were on the phone. I told them I had to leave the room,
and I would be back in about five minutes. I asked them to figure something out and be ready to
summarize it when I returned. Since they couldn't break apart into side conversations on the phone, they
started talking with each other. When I returned, they were able to continue as a group.

Cooperation

A common task, such as physicians preparing as a group a diagnostic and treatment plan, or
homemakers preparing advice for a newlywed, will quickly produce a working, interactive group.
Eyes closed exercise
One thing that can instantly engender trust and the feeling that they have all been through something
together is an "eyes closed exercise."
I will more fully describe several in the projective techniques section of this article, but what I mean is
asking them to close their eyes and imagine the last time they used the product, or encountered a certain
type of situation. The very act of closing their eyes in front of each other and then sharing an experience
with each other will go very far in getting them to share private thoughts.

Asking the right questions, in the right way

Of course, questions are our stock in trade. It takes a high degree of skill to ask non-directive questions.
The moderator must maintain an attitude of great interest without reinforcing any particular viewpoint.
There is nothing like training in clinical psychology to teach a person to maintain an interested but non-
judgmental attitude. A poker face won't do it. You need to have genuine reactions which are coming from
interest in the person, rather than judging the person. In projective techniques courses, you learn to sit
with a person for hours without leading them down predetermined paths. You show people ink blots,
ambiguous drawings and other stimuli and ask them to tell you what they see.
The Rorschach Test didn't teach me much about human nature, but it sure did teach me how to ask
questions. In that test, you show people a succession of 10 cards with inkblots on them. The person is
requested to tell you what he sees, which you dutifully write down without comment. You then cycle back
and ask them "Do you remember what you saw?" "What about it looks like an X?" You quickly learn that
very minor inflections make people pull back, or get them into self-justification. If you slip and ask
"Why?" instead of "What about it..." you quickly learn that "Why?" makes people defensive. You see that
if you say, "That's good," they shut down, presumably because when you don't say it again, you are
implying "That's bad." You then cycle back again and see if you can get them to see common and
unusual things that they didn't see previously (this is called "testing the limits").
These techniques are useful in focus groups, especially testing the limits. At the end of the session, it is
often useful to present different opinions to see if people will reconsider their positions. You can often
verify whether material is persuasive this way. You can also tell how strongly held are the positions.
The most important thing to realize is that a question, or a probe, is nothing more than a stimulus to
elicit further output from the respondent. When asked a question, respondents think not only of the
answer, but of why you are asking the question, and why in that particular way. They also think of how
you will view their answer, and modify it accordingly.
When seen in this light, more possibilities open up. Some of the best "questions" aren't questions at all.
Non-directive probes for use in focus groups
[Notice how few are questions]

• Give me a [picture, description] of...

• I'd like you all to [discuss, decide]...
• Tell me what goes on when you ...
• Describe what it's like to ...
• Tell me about ... Tell me more about that...
• Somebody sum this all up ...
• Let's see [pause] I'm having trouble figuring out how I should word this to my client...
• Give me an example.
• Explain to me ...
• Let me pose a problem ...
• I'm wondering what would you do if...
• What I'd like to hear about is how you are dealing with ...
• Ask each other to find out ...
• I don't think I'm getting it all. Here's what I've got so far, tell me what I am missing or not
getting correctly ...
• So, it sounds like you're saying ...
• That's helpful. Now let's hear some different thoughts ...
• How might someone do that?
• I'd like you to word it as an "I wish" or a "How to." [Thanks to George Prince at Synectics]
• How important is that concern?
• So, the message you want me to get from that story is ...
• I can't seem to read the groups' reaction to that. Help me out.
• Let's hear a different perspective on this.
• Say more.
• Keep talking.
• Don't stop.
• Just say anything that comes to mind.
• Boy, that got quite a rise out of everyone. What is everyone reacting to?
• Can someone turn that [wish, dream, request] into a reality? Does anyone know how to do it?
• Let's see, e haven't heard from ...
• Before we move on, let's hear any burning thoughts that you have to get out.
• Let's turn this complaint into a problem ... How can we solve it?
• [I see in your face ... I hear in your voice] something important, but I don't know what it is ...
• You seem to have a lot of excitement and energy around that. Talk to me from the excitement.
• What's bothering you?
• Who can build on this last idea?
• What am I not asking?
• How come the energy level of the group just went down?
• Think about a situation in which you -------. Tell me about it.
It is a real art to be able to steer people down a particular line of inquiry without influencing the content
of their answers. Running a successful focus group without asking any questions at all would be the
equivalent of pitching a no-hitter.
Avoid closed-ended Questions
A closed-ended question can be answered with a "Yes" or a "No." For instance, "Do you like this idea?"
instead of "Tell me your reactions" (which isn't even a question) or "What about this idea do you like, if
anything?" Banish closed-ended questions from your repertoire, unless your intent is to shut down the
discussion. For instance, "Does anyone have anything more to say on this before we move on?" will
usually be greeted with dead silence, allowing you the perfect opportunity to move on.

Group Dynamics

Group dynamics is not, as most people in qualitative research think, how much people talk to each other
in groups (that is interaction). Group dynamics refers to a vast field which studies how people's behavior
changes as a result of being a member of a group.
The group dynamics people have hundreds of techniques for getting people to disclose more in groups. It
is well worth studying their writings and attending their workshops, particularly those of the National
Training Laboratories.
I am writing a separate article on the practical use of Group Dynamics in focus groups, so I'll hold my
thoughts for there.

Non-verbal behavior

Non-verbal behavior includes all of the gestures, postures, vocalizations and physical cues that we use to
get information. It is all behavior which is not verbal. It may come to you visually or aurally.
What is most important is to not take interpretations too literally. A gesture does not have a meaning in
and of itself, people have meanings. So, the classic arms folded across the chest usually signifies
rejection, but might signify many other things. Non verbal behavior presents clues which need to be
corroborated. It is particularly important to investigate non-verbals which seem to contradict
verbalizations.
Train yourself to spot congruence and contradiction.
Also, you can tell a great deal from how people relate to the product. When feasible, let them handle the
product. Their actions will speak louder than their words. [Thanks to Hy Mariampolski for helping me
clarify this and the next area.]
Paralinguistics
Paralinguistics is the study of how people use their voices and language to convey meaning.
Pay attention to how people use voice and language. This includes: choice of vocabulary, comfort with
expressing themselves, sudden inarticulateness, speed of speaking, hesitations, fluency, emotional level,
degree of energy, etc. People often say more in one inflection than in tons of words. Follow up with
probes like, "I hear you agreeing, but not with much enthusiasm. Where are you?"
Pay attention to what the people aren't saying
This is probably the hardest skill of a moderator: spotting what people aren't saying, looking for
omissions and what they would be saying if the situation were different.
The only suggestion I can offer for this is to repeatedly ask yourself, during and after the group, "What
aren't they saying?" Once in a while, this is even a fruitful question to ask openly in the group, or in the
post session client meeting.
It helps to have a broad base of experience with which to compare what a given group is saying with
what similar types of groups usually tell you.
Projective Techniques

Again, let me warn you: these are not parlor games. They are serious ways of helping people get in
touch with and reveal things that they cannot directly access or communicate. These techniques are to
be used judiciously.
Explanation
The idea behind projective techniques is very simple:
People tend to complete the incomplete. When confronted with an ambiguous situation, they try to
complete it out of their assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, experience, values, etc. They will fill in the blanks
by "projecting" their thoughts and feelings onto the stimulus.
For instance, if you show respondents an ambiguous picture, where it is unclear exactly what the people
in the picture are doing, and ask the respondents to imagine that the picture is about people who have
something to do with a product, the participants will start filling in the blanks from their own past
experience. If asked to make up a story, they will construct a tale which reveals assumptions, perceptions
and attitudes about the product. Their story is not in the picture, after all. It is their projection onto the
picture.
The practical value of presenting ambiguous or incomplete situations is that if you want to understand
why people do something, such as buy a product, they don't have to remember or be articulate enough
to tell you. All you have to do is get them to recreate their purchase, or their use of the product, and
presto, it's all there in front of you. You do this by getting them to imagine the product vividly, in a
variety of ways, and give them various alternative verbal and non-verbal means of expressing
themselves.
Every projective technique presents people with an ambiguous or incomplete situation (stimulus) and lets
people "project" their own interpretation onto it, usually encouraging reactions which are both verbal and
non-verbal.
This mode of expression also tends to bypass the tendency that people have of censoring what they say
for social acceptability. It tends to shut off evaluation and get us more genuine responses.
Let's look at some of these techniques.
Drawing
Let's start with the ultimate ambiguous stimulus, a blank sheet of paper. You can ask people to draw a
product, or the kind of people they think would buy the product, or the setting in which the product
would be found. Immediately tell them that nothing above a kindergarten level is expected [Thanks to
Ann Scheib for this suggestion].
They then show (or describe in the case of telephone groups) their drawings and describe them. Ask the
other participants to suggest embellishments.
A wonderful variation that was demonstrated by Irv Merson at a Qualitative Research Consultants
Association Convention is to have people make a montage. They are given a pile of magazines, scissors,
paper and glue sticks and are asked to make a montage using the photos, drawings and words they find
in the magazines. For instance, we were asked to make a montage which expresses what it means to be
a moderator. To our surprise, all of our montages showed among other things, pictures dominated by
clocks. None of us had realized how totally dominated by time deadlines we were until we all started
discussing our montages.
Guided Fantasies or Visualizations
Perhaps even more ambiguous than a blank sheet of paper is an imaginary projection screen. The
participants are asked to close their eyes and "imagine on a screen a scene in which [you fill in here
anything which will put the person into the situation you want]."
The participants then share and compare their experiences.
If I were working for a political candidate, instead of taking a bunch of notoriously unpredictive polls, I
would take people on guided fantasies to discussions among their friends, to the voting place, into the
voting booth and have them see themselves pull a lever, have them change their minds a few times, then
finally open the booth and see how they feel. I'd then have them discuss in depth what they experienced.
I'll bet a lot more useful information would come out than the usual practice of tallying answers to the
question, "If the election were held today, who would you vote for and why?"
There are an almost infinite variety of guided fantasies. You can bring people back to ancient times, or to
the next century. You can have a mentor appear and deliver a message. You can make the person into a
less experienced student and experience the mistakes he would make. You can have the ideal product
appear through a haze.
The guided fantasy is a much safer and realistic way for people to experience their feelings about the
product, and a much safer way to express them. A fantasy is neither right nor wrong, appropriate nor
inappropriate. No one can argue with it. All they can do is present an alternative fantasy.
Guided fantasies, like most projective techniques, can be a little more difficult to interpret, however. The
moderator and the client must not take the imagery too literally. People are expressing attitudes in a
metaphorical way. The meaning of these metaphors and images must be checked out carefully, just like
anything else in focus groups. They will often form patterns and themes. These can be verified in a
variety of ways.
For instance, ask the participants what they were most surprised about. Participants will often say things
like, "I never realized how strongly I feel about X until I went through the exercise." or "I always thought
this feature of the product was a petty annoyance. I never realized how angry I am about X."
If someone is not sure what something in a guided fantasy means, use the Gestalt technique of having
them experience themselves as that thing and talk to the group.
For instance, if they were to see the product in the form of an animal, and can't tell you what about the
animal reminds them of the product, have them imagine that they are the animal and ask them to talk to
you from that place. Often they will get in touch with the association.
Another technique is to say to the group, "I seem to be picking up a theme here, but I don't want to put
words in your mouths. Let me describe what I seem to be hearing, and add to it or change it to make it
more accurate." Then listen for the emotional tone of the agreement or disagreement. For instance, if
they just agree with me intellectually, without any enthusiasm behind it, I usually don't take my
interpretation too seriously.

Word Association and Sentence Completion

Say, "I'm going to say a word, and I want you to write down the first word that comes to mind (word
association)." Or, "I am going to start a sentence and I want you to finish it."
Examples:

• The most annoying thing about this product is ...

• The only thing that would get me to change my mind is ...
• I'd tell the president of this company...
• The only kind of person crazy enough to use this product would be...
• I'd convince people to switch by saying
• The best thing about this product is ...
• What will get people to really buy this product is the realization that ...

Family of Brands

I am indebted to Suzanne Heineke for this technique. Give people a piece of paper which has several
different products listed, with room for people to write next to each. Ask them to imagine that these
different brands are a family of any kind. They can be past, present or future, and not necessarily from
the same biological family. They might be a team or group that works together. Have them describe the
roles that each brand assumes in the family and its characteristics.
For instance, in a group of credit cards, American Express Platinum might be seen as a pharaoh, with
Visa and Master Card as slaves. You would want to find out how the pharaoh is experienced and what
different kinds of slaves the other two cards are. If you just had asked people why they got the Amex
Platinum Card, you might get an elaborate system of rationalizations.
This kind of an exercise would lead very naturally into a guided fantasy or into role playing.
Role Playing

This is where people are asked to play the different products, or kinds of people who would use the
products, or anything else that is relevant, even parts of the product.
For instance, you might have each person play a different credit card, and talk with each other about the
relative merits of the products.
Psychodrama has elevated this kind of approach into a high art, with hundreds of techniques, which can
take years of training. It's worth taking Psychodrama workshops and learning to adapt some of their
techniques to qualitative research.

"What's My Line"

This is the mystery challenger portion of the old "What's My Line" TV program. Bernadette Tracy invented
this one and it's been widely copied.
She has the respondents imagine that the mystery challenger signs in with only his/her last name (which
is the product name). The respondents are asked to imagine the person: man or woman, how old, what
does he/she look like, how tall, weight, what style of dress, what does he/she do for a living, etc. They
are asked to visualize the person clearly and are then asked what kind of a personality he/she has, what
type of job? Does he/she have many friends (popularity of the product), why does the person have these
friends, what could he/she do to get more (marketing strategy)? What self improvement courses could
the person take? How could the person change his/her style of dress (modify packaging)? What are
his/her children like, parents, spouse, who else in family (product modifications)?

Gestalt techniques

Gestalt Psychology has a large variety of techniques designed to get people to experience, rather than
talk about, situations. Many of these techniques are readily adaptable to qualitative research. It's well
worth taking some Gestalt workshops to experience this methodology firsthand.
Their most well-known technique, originated by Fritz Perls, is the "hot-seat" technique. One person is
made the center of attention and is asked what they are experiencing right now, and where in their body
they are experiencing it. They may be asked to talk from that place, and whether this is coming from a
particular person in the past. They may be asked to "put the person on the chair," that is, imagine that
the person is sitting opposite them on another chair. They are asked to talk to the person. After a while,
they are asked to sit on the other chair and become the other person talking back to the original person.
The person switches back and forth, becoming himself and then the other person alternately.
This can be done between a person and a product, situation or even an image, emotion or thought. It
takes great skill to know how to frame the experiment and when to have people switch, but it is a very
powerful technique.
The Gestalt people are very careful not to interpret what they see without having the person experience
it for themselves. If they see a gesture, they will tend to ask people to exaggerate it, then talk from it, as
if they were the gesture itself.
When someone chuckles in a group, or makes any other signal which is not completely congruent with
what he or she is saying, I'll often say something like, "What's the chuckle? I want the chuckle to talk to
me. Chuckle, what are you trying to tell me?" Some people think I have left the planet, but most know
exactly what I mean and will go along with my question, allowing me to tap into previously unavailable
information.

Talking from different parts of themselves

You might say that you want to talk to the adventurous part of them, the one that likes to take risks. Ask
them to ask their more critical part, the part that protects them from foolhardy impulses, to go away for
a while, but not too far, since you will later want to talk to that part of them. Now, you can discuss the
more way-out and speculative aspects of a new product idea. Or with medical experts, I sometimes say I
want to talk with the clinician in them who has to treat patients tomorrow, as distinct from the scientist in
them who has to wait for more data before coming to a conclusion.

Age regression

You might ask people to imagine that they are using the product at the beginning of their career, or as a
child.

Product Transformation

This is a very old technique, but which still works well.

Have them imagine that the product has been transformed into something else and have them describe
it: For instance, have them describe the products as cars, animals, books, ships, department stores,
plants, buildings, movies, sports, mythological creatures, science fiction, computers, or anything else
which will be evocative for the type of people you are talking with.

Product obituary

Again, this is an old one from the workshops of the '60's. Have them assume that the product died and
have them, as a group, write the obituary.

Personality profiles or other pen-and-pencil tests

There are a wide variety of self-administered personality profiles available. The MMPI (Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory) is the granddaddy of them all, but it is too extensive and too clinical
for use in marketing research. Some simpler ones are available which can be helpful in pre-screening for
certain types of participants, or for being able to segment the different types of people who might use a
product, for instance. I'm currently experimenting with several which look very promising for helping in
the development of marketing strategy and promotional themes.

Sorting techniques

Foremost among these techniques are the various types of perceptual mapping approaches. While these
are usually quantitative techniques, simpler versions can be excellent discussion starters and group tasks.
People can be asked to sort words, pictures, brands, etc. into either previously structured categories, or
into as many of few piles as they want. The instructions can be as simple as, "Put the things that go
together, together."

Diary keeping

Having people keep track, on paper, of their practices, thoughts, feelings over time. They can then be
brought together in focus groups to discuss their practices.

Polling techniques

There are a large variety of polling, or vote taking, techniques for focus groups. While these techniques
are misleading when viewed as ways of projecting numbers onto the general population, they are
nevertheless valuable for getting people to commit to positions which they will then discuss later.
There are devices which let people turn a dial in order to record their reactions. People can be asked to
fill out rating forms, write down their reactions, or even fill out ballots.
In my telephone focus groups, I can electronically poll the participants by having them use the buttons
on their telephones.

Changing formats

You can run user/non-user groups where they are given the assignment of convincing each other to use
or drop a particular product.
You can set up a debate format, or have them become a marketing team in a company, or give them
other group tasks.
In conclusion
I hope that this article has encouraged you to approach what you are told in focus groups with some
degree of skepticism, but also encouraged you to explore methods which will help you get to greater
depth.

- Not the end -

I will be adding more techniques to this list, and hope that readers will contribute their favorites.
Contributions will be credited.
Comments on these techniques, and suggestions for improvement, will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your support

Client Guide to the Focus Group

This is an advanced guide to the rationale behind focus groups and how to use them best. It will
tell you how focus groups differ psychologically from individual interviews, and how to take
advantage of these differences. It will also help you understand the different uses of focus
groups and the uses to avoid

Why this guide is needed

In the decades that I have been conducting focus groups, they have evolved from "the thing to do when
you don't know what to do" - a technique for general exploration and questionnaire design - into a
sophisticated collection of tools for an extremely wide variety of purposes. Yet there are still many people
in the marketing research community, both clients and practitioners, who have not yet come to
appreciate advances in focus group practice.
The purpose of this article is to provide an advanced handbook of the latest state of the art, in order to
help clients use focus groups more effectively. I'd like to take focus group research out of the realm of
mystery and to move it more toward science than art.
Cycles
This is badly needed. The focus group seems to have cycles of popularity. In the last 25 years, the focus
group has gone from a controversial method, to high acceptance in certain industries, then fallen out of
favor, and is now enjoying a resurgence that probably makes it the fastest growing research
methodology. It is often abused, misused and overused in some of its more common uses. Yet, it is
unused or underused for some of its most valuable applications. There are Fortune 100 companies that
do not run focus groups, and others that conduct several a day. Some companies swear at them, others
swear by them. These differences are more a matter of approach to research, rather than the
applicability of focus group methodology to their particular products and customers. Most of what has
been written about the focus group is introductory in nature. Simple introductory articles and books are
important, but it is now time to move beyond the nuts and bolts into how to best operate the machinery.
Focus Groups Are Not a "Substitute for Real Research"
There is a widespread - though mistaken - belief that focus groups are the easiest to understand, execute
and interpret of all research methodologies. After all, a focus group is just a bunch of people reacting to a
concept or discussing a subject. You don't even have to know exactly what questions to ask. You
certainly don't need a tight questionnaire. Any friendly person can get a group of people together, ask
questions and the conversation flows. What's to interpret? You just listen to what the participants are
saying and generalize them to the population. Granted, very few people would actually agree with the
statements in this paragraph. But too many act as if they do.
The truth is that focus groups require a considerable amount of professional discipline in their design,
execution and interpretation. Their flexibility and adaptability is mistaken for looseness or casualness. It is
the superficial and intentional resemblance of focus groups to simple group discussions that often causes
them to be mistaken for simple group discussions.
A focus group is no more a simple group discussion than a group therapy session is a simple group
discussion. Both look superficially like simple group discussions, but they have much more ambitious
objectives and require considerably more from the group leader. I've conducted both; focus groups are
more difficult to lead. In focus groups, there are extraordinary pressures to accomplish specific objectives
within extreme time constraints. In order to properly conduct focus groups, years of training and
experience are needed not only in traditional psychology, but also in the separate fields of sociology,
group dynamics and business (including marketing, sales and distribution).

The unique characteristics of focus groups

What's so unique about focus groups? In order to answer this question, let's first look at what happens in
an individual depth interview, which, like a focus group, also allows for open-ended interaction, but
with only one person, the interviewer. Then let's see what changes are introduced when we usher other
people into the situation.
The Individual Interview
In an individual depth interview, the respondent is relating to one person, the interviewer. The clear
advantage, in some cases, is that responses are not "contaminated" by other reactions. This lack of
contamination is desirable in some situations, since a very skillful interviewer can get the respondent into
great depth without distractions, and without having people change or withhold their opinions when they
hear what other people have to say.
That's the theory. Often, however, the respondent simply runs out of steam. The interviewer is sure there
is more, but skillful probing simply fails to elicit it. With each succeeding respondent, the interviewer tries
to get into greater depth or breadth, but often the responses are all variations on the same theme. More
interviews give greater statistical reliability you can be increasingly confident that people will say the
same thing but often you don't learn anything more after the first few interviews.
The Group Interview
Now let's introduce seven more people into the situation. One of two things can happen:
(1) An inexperienced or unskilled moderator will tend to conduct a serial group interview. He/she will
conduct several individual interviews, talking with first one, then another of the participants, with
everyone in each others' presence. The only difference between this type of interview and an individual
interview is that each respondent can hear the answers of the others. What is lacking for it to be a focus
group is meaningful interaction.
(2) In a real focus group, the moderator gets the respondents to interact with each other in a way that
reveals additional information. Let's look at how this happens.
Open-Ended Group Interaction
In virtually all forms of marketing research, people respond in isolation, with no exposure to each other.
In contrast, the hallmark of the focus group is open-ended group interaction. Open ended: Respondents
can answer in their own words, rather than being forced to give yes/no, multiple choice or numerical
answers. Interaction: More importantly, people are able to freely react to each others' responses. This
open ended group interaction leads to several other elements:
Roles
Each respondent now has eight other people to relate to seven other participants plus the moderator. (A
relationship includes all of the expectations, communication, beliefs, evaluations and emotions that
people have toward each other.) What happens?
Instead of two relationships in the interview that of the interviewer to the respondent and that of the
respondent to the interviewer we now have 8 X 9 = 72, plus all of the subgroup relationships!
People cannot handle 72+ relationships at the same time separately. They have to organize them. What
is important is that the way people handle these relationships reflects what they do in real life and now
becomes an important part of the information we are collecting.
Let me explain: In contrast to the individual interview, in groups people start interacting with each other
according to the different roles they are most comfortable with. This more closely simulates what they
do in the real world, where they rarely act in isolation. They become:
leaders dominators
innovators early adopters
late gadflies
submissives supporters
explicators simplifiers
complicators investigators
questioners integrators
speculators distractors
fragmenters emotionalists
persuaders adopters
"assistant moderators" laggards
... and dozens of other roles, usually several at the same time. Roles are primarily a group phenomenon.
Why is this so important? It is the interaction between the different types of people, in their
various roles, which brings out the most useful information: A marketer needs to hear where
there is consensus among these different types of people, and where there is a diversity of experience
and opinion. You want to hear not only opinions, but also the kinds of people who hold these opinions,
how the opinions are expressed and what values are at the root of them. You also want to hear how
these different types of people react to what is said.
For instance: How does the leader lead? How does the dominator attempt to dominate? How does the
distracter distract? What grabs the innovator, what are the defenses of the laggard? What is persuasive
and to whom? What segments will first buy the product, even when the other types of people are trying
to dissuade him or her?
Observing people interacting in these roles allows you to know what they can all agree on, and what
differences need to be addressed in your marketing.
Stimulation
As you move from individual interviews to groups, people not only revert to type by interacting in their
diverse roles, they stimulate each other. By stimulation, I mean more than just interaction. The value
of focus groups is not only that people can react to each others' comments (interaction), but in so doing,
they potentiate each other (stimulation) the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Stimulation is
created by the excitement, group support, challenge, new ideas and other features of the interaction. It
can provide strategic advantages that often mean the difference between the success or failure of a
product.
There is an almost irresistible pull to say things that they would ordinarily not reveal. They:

• react to each others' comments

• draw each other out
• ask each other questions you didn't think to ask
• build on each others' ideas
• spark new ideas
• jog each others' memories
• modify each others' comments
• fill in incompletions and gaps in knowledge
• nudge each other out of ruts and habitual thinking.
 • take opposing positions
• persuade each other
• change their opinions

As a result of stimulation, you get more information from the group than you could possibly get from any
amount of questioning of individuals, even in situations where the purchase decision is itself an individual
one.
Flexibility
Focus groups, more than any other method, allow for the emergence and pursuit of surprise information.
Agendas can be modified from group to group, and even within groups. A good moderator can build
upon the ideas and insights of previous groups, getting to a greater depth of understanding.
Putting it all together
In summary, focus groups uniquely expose and accentuate both the similarities and the differences
between distinct types of people. By seeing how these different types of people interact, you get a
completeness of information that can be achieved in no other way. Focus groups spark more new ideas
and identify more unexpected information than any other method of marketing research.

How to use focus groups

These characteristics of focus groups lead us to their most effective uses. To briefly review, these
characteristics are:

• Open-Ended Interaction
• Strong emergence of roles
• Stimulation
• Flexibility

Let's now look at the kinds of problems that can best be solved by a methodology with these unique
characteristics.

Given these characteristics, focus groups are best for:

• Exploration ("Fishing Expedition")

• Investigation (Detective Work)
• Identification of Present Practices
• Understanding Motivations
• New Idea Generation
• Communication Refinement
• Persuasion Design Labs
• Strategic Positioning
• Word of Mouth Research

Exploration: (The "Fishing Expedition")

Often, you are facing a situation where you literally don't know the language to use or the questions to
ask. This can be when you are exploring a new market, going to a new population, or entering a new
area of technology.
When you are exploring new territory, you don't know what you will find. Focus groups allow you the
flexibility to "go with the flow" to uncover hidden information.
This is why focus groups are so useful in quantitative research design for tightening up the concepts,
issues and questions.
Examples of actual research problems:

• What are the present satisfactions and dissatisfactions with our product and those of our
competition?
• Find out for us what are the deepest fears of the anesthesiologist and what words they use to
express them.
• See how blue collar workers feel about shaving.
• See what complaints and dissatisfactions arise when groups of car owners "bitch" about their
cars.
• Generate a long list of minor improvements which would make our product seem different.
• Identify what themes arise these days among hospital administrators spontaneously discussing
their jobs.

Unfortunately, this use of focus groups is often considered a luxury. "We don't have time for that sort of
research with our specific pressing problems, and we're in touch with our customers anyway." However,
what your customers and prospects are telling each other may not be what they are telling you. Also,
dissatisfactions and needs may be deeply buried, requiring skilled probing to uncover.
Investigation: ("Detective Work")
In contrast to exploration, where you are looking for anything of value and don't know specifically what
you are looking for, in detective work you know the characteristics of what you are looking for, but you
don't know who the "culprit" is. You are looking for the answer to a particular question, an explanation
for a particular phenomenon. The answer is already out there, but you have to find it.
The use of the investigational focus group is particularly powerful in situations where each person only
has a piece of the puzzle. When you put them together, the whole picture emerges. Such situations may
involve multiple decision makers, different members of a team, complex professional relationships, or
distributor, dealer, salesperson, customer relationships.
In contrast to the pre-questionnaire use of the exploratory focus group, investigational focus groups are
useful after quantitative studies to help explain the anomalies that inevitably turn up.

Examples of actual research problems:

How do the hospital administrators, head of the department, practicing physicians, nurses, therapists,
members of certain committees all interact in order to decide to put a particular machine in the hospital,
or adopt a particular drug?
Our sales curve is going up. Find out if it is made up of satisfied customers or if there are growing
dissatisfactions that will make the bottom drop out.
Why are our sales not going down when the competition's sales are going up and the market is not
expanding?
Our competition is saying something that is sabotaging our sales. What are they really saying?
Our sales people are not getting the story across. What are they actually saying and doing?
Focus groups allow you the flexibility to follow the twists and turns, hunches and clues of an
investigation, while creating the psychological environment in which people are open with each other,
even though they aren't with you.
Identification of Present Practices
Often, how people are using a product is quite different than they will reveal to an outsider. Or, the
details of their usage is difficult, boring or too elementary to talk about to an outsider. However, people
will get into the most amazing detail with other people who are in the same shoes, who speak the same
language, who they expect to understand them.
Too many product managers think they understand how their product is being used (often they used it
when they were in the market), and they miss many opportunities to fill shifting needs.
Examples of actual research problems:

How is our product being used vs. that of the competitors'?

Our drug is not being used in an FDA approved manner. How are physicians really using it, and what are
the causes of this usage?
Discover any new uses of our product which we can use to expand our market.
When someone drops our product, usually they are asked for their reasons. But no one will say, "I used it
incorrectly, inappropriately and stupidly." They say, "It didn't work." Analyze the usage of ex-users to
determine whether there is a problem that is correctable (by changing the product, changing people's
expectations, or training people in better use).
Understanding Motivation
Understanding people's motivations is the second most difficult assignment in marketing, in fact in all of
psychology. Getting people to change is the first.
But in order to get people to change, to buy your product, to give up old ways of doing things, you have
to understand their motivations.
Several things make understanding motivation extremely difficult:

• People often do not understand why they are doing the things they are doing, and therefore
can't tell you.
• Even when they do understand why they are doing things, they don't want to tell you.
• When they do tell you, they often don't tell you the truth, or the whole truth. Or, they tell you
more than the truth.
• It is more important for most people to preserve their view of themselves than tell you why they
are doing what they are doing.
• There is rarely a single reason why a given person does something. Any simple, single act of
behavior is usually the result of many complex forces from inside and outside the individual.
• The same act of behavior can be motivated by different things in different people. Members of
the same group, performing the same task at the same time may have vastly different
motivations.
• The same person will do the same thing at different times for different motivations.
• Some motivations, even if you find them out, are often irrelevant to marketing, in that you can
do little, if anything, about them. These may involve motivations based upon deep fears,
pathology or illegal activities.
• Yet motivations are extremely important for the marketer to understand, particularly those
centering around fundamental beliefs, values, tastes and emotions.

The best way to find out about motivation is by inferring the causes of behavior from people's thoughts
and actions. The worst way, often, is to ask them, "Why did you do it?"
The best way to get into people's thoughts and actions is to have them talk, in an atmosphere of
psychological safety, about what they do not why they do it and how they feel about what they do.
When enough descriptions about enough behavior are put together, patterns begin to emerge. The
people you are trying to understand are often unaware of these patterns. You then test these patterns
against other, similar people to adjust your message.
The best laboratory for this is the focus group. People get caught up in the spirit of the group,
particularly when they discover people who are simpatico. These other people quickly cease to be
strangers, yet they aren't friends, family or co-workers. They begin to pour out information, opinions and
feelings that they would not ordinarily share with most other people.
The focus group is the only setting available to the marketer for finding out deep motivations which can
then be used to fulfill people's deepest needs. Provided, of course, that the moderator is a superb
psychologist (academic training is unimportant, competence comes from many sources).
Examples of actual research problems:

• Why do people buy our product?

• Why do people take so long to adopt our product?
• What are people's unfulfilled desires and needs?
• What are people's real concerns as distinct from all the concerns that we can imagine.
• We make a claim. People buy our product. Are they buying the product in response to our
promise, despite our promise, or for some other reasons?
• What will motivate someone to read our ad, read our other promotional material, listen to our
salespeople?
• How can we get people to try our product?

New Idea Generation

This is the most valuable and least used use of the focus group. In most marketing research
assignments, you are trying to find something that is, rather than create something that isn't. In new
idea generation, you are trying to discover or create new ideas: products, services, themes, explanations,
thoughts, images, and metaphors.
Some people believe that this is best left up to the "creative types." I believe that new idea generation is
not only within the bounds of marketing research, but at the very heart of it. I do not believe that the
primary mission of marketing research is to find out what is going on in the marketplace and stop there.
Finding out about the present situation is not the end point, it is the beginning. What can be done about
the present situation is much more important. I not only want to find out what is, but what can be.
It is artificial and dangerous to separate fact finding from creativity. They are different processes, but
they interact so strongly that they should not be separated.
In a group, someone expresses a desire, someone else reacts with a wish, someone else suggests a way
to do it, someone else modifies it to be more practical, the whole groups yells, "Yeah, that's it!" That's
marketing research at it's best.

Examples of actual research problems:

Develop new features for our next product.

Develop advertising themes which will create a high degree of interest in our products.
Find a new positioning for our product which will increase our market share.
Generate new product ideas.
We have pharmaceutical products. We can't easily modify our drugs, and new drugs are discovered in the
laboratory, not the focus group. Find us ways to get the physician interested in our drug, new
educational material which will be well received, new delivery systems.
Sometimes seemingly trivial changes can make a dramatic difference: discovering the hidden benefit of a
tablet instead of a capsule made one drug a market leader; discovering the need for a book on a subject
which was neglected, then producing it, made a drug's sales take off.
Communication Refinement
From a marketing perspective, what you actually say is not as important as what people think you say,
and what people think of what they think you said. In other words, communication has more to do with
what is received and accepted than what is actually meant.
There is a "Murphy's Law" of communication which says that if there is any possible way for people to
misunderstand you, they will and in the most damaging possible way.
It is crucially important to understand how your communication is received. This is usually attempted by
various recall measures. However, this is a very primitive method. In the real world, people think about
what you are selling, and talk it over with other people.
A much better way is to show people ads, promotional material, or even give them a sales presentation
in a series of focus groups. You can get a much deeper idea of exactly what ideas are getting across and
how people are reacting to them.
Examples of actual research problems:

What is the best way to explain our concept?

What are our ads, promotional material, salespeople actually communicating?
Why do so many people think our tablet is supposed to be dissolved in water when it is supposed to be
swallowed whole? (In this case, the salespeople were demonstrating dispersion in the stomach by
dissolving the tablet in water).
Why are the Japanese offended by our ad showing an octopus using our deodorant under his arms?
(Because the Japanese view the appendages of the octopus as legs!)
Persuasion Design Laboratories
Focus groups provide an extraordinary way for you to hear people as they are actually deliberating about
a purchase. You can provide them with promotional material, even invite a salesperson to give a
presentation, then have the group discuss what they are persuaded by and what they reject. As they
bring up objections and points in support of your product, you can introduce other materials for further
reaction. As you go through a series of groups, you can refine the persuasion strategy by finding out the
best order in which to present material, what is needed as proof of claims, what answers to objections
actually work (or undercut the objections before they even come up), and what actually closes a sale.

Examples of actual research problems:

Tell us which of our ads, sales and promotional materials are working, which are not, and which ones
need to be developed.
Circa 1971: Automated Teller Machines (ATM's) which in those days were called Cash Machines are sure
to cause many objections. Empirically develop and test ways to undercut and/or answer the objections.
Our competition is using scientific studies in an inaccurate and unethical way to bolster their position,
when in fact the studies show the opposite of what they are claiming. If physicians understood the
complex data, they would be outraged, and our competition's tactics would backfire. Find out how to
accomplish this.
This is the hardest type of group to conduct, since it requires on the part of the moderator a research
orientation, an experimental disposition, a creative attitude and a high degree of persuasive skill, all at
the same time. For many people, these skills are incompatible.
Strategic Positioning
The flexibility and creative stimulation of focus groups makes them superb both for developing
positionings for products, as well as testing and refining positionings which have already been developed.

Examples of actual research problems:

Where do I fit into the rest of the products in my category?

How can I redefine my product to get greater market share?
How do I describe my totally unique product?
Concept Development
New concepts are not born fully grown. They must be nurtured and pruned. The focus group is the most
fertile ground for growing and modifying new concepts.
See my paper, Concept "Testing" in Focus Groups for more details.
Word of mouth research
Word of mouth is the most powerful force in the marketplace. In many industries and with many
products it is more powerful than advertising, salespeople and promotional materials put together. In
fact, it is of overriding importance in virtually any field where it is difficult, risky or expensive to try a
product. It is notoriously important in fields like medicine (among physicians), automobiles,
entertainment (movies, TV and books), consumer products, agricultural products and industrial products.
Yet, marketers and marketing researchers neglect word of mouth to an appalling degree, probably
because they don't think that they can do anything to research it reliably, or ultimately do anything about
it. There is an amazing amount of indifference to word of mouth, and resignation toward it.
Yet, I know of no other research that is easier. Again, the focus group is the answer. Here again, the
unique characteristics of the focus group (open ended interaction, stimulation, emergence of roles and
flexibility) make it superb for researching word of mouth and even for learning how to influence it.
All you have to do is to put several people who are using your or your competitor's product together in
a group with interested non users. The non-users are asked to find out about the product from the users.
This requires very little moderating skill, especially in the first session or two. In fact, the least
moderating the better. You want to sit back and listen. You can even "leave" such groups for a while, and
observe from behind the one way mirror with your clients.
However, while you don't need to be a good moderator for such sessions, you had better be a superb
listener and analyst. You have to listen for what is behind the questions and concerns, what is credible
and persuasive, and what motivates people to try, buy and praise the product to others. You need to
figure out what is fundamental, and what is superficial. So much information is generated from such
research that you end up with an embarrassment of riches which will take a great deal of analytical and
marketing skill to sort out.

Examples of actual research problems:

Who influences the purchase decision, and how?

What are our customers saying about our product and our competitors' products?
What are recent triers telling their friends?
What are our dissatisfied ex-customers saying?
What concepts and words are people using to describe our product?
What would most strongly influence word of mouth to turn in our favor?
[Back to home page]

What Focus groups should generally not be used for:

Quantitative Information
If the opinion, attitude, belief, etc. is there, focus groups will generally dig it out. However, focus groups
are notoriously unreliable for telling you the exact percentage of people who have a particular belief, hold
an opinion, etc. The participants in focus groups are often representative of the population, but they are
not necessarily a statistically representative sample of the population in question: often their numbers are
too small, or they don't have the same proportions of subgroups as the general population.
On the other hand, who cares? For instance, most of the time, you shouldn't care if 10% or 40% of the
market has a particular objection. The sheer logic or emotional strength of the objection makes it
imperative that you correct the underlying problem.
Discovering complex relationships that can only be uncovered by sophisticated statistical
techniques.
There are many quantitative techniques, such as perceptual mapping, which can pinpoint complex
relationships in a very precise way. From these, you can see hidden opportunities that focus groups will
tend to miss. However, whatever is discovered had better be tested and refined with real people, which
usually means focus groups.
Projecting the extent of future actions.
It should come as no news that people do not always do what they say they will do, especially if they say
it in front of their peers.
For instance, people said that they would not buy the Taurus automobile, when it was first tested in
focus groups. They called it a "jelly bean." Much to the credit of the Ford executives, they interpreted
these verbalizations as meaning that people needed much more exposure to and education about the so-
called aero look, and the whole new approach to automobile manufacture. On the other hand, almost
everyone said they would buy the Edsel.
You can project future behavior from focus groups, but not on the basis of statistics, or of the
uninterpreted verbalizations of the participants and certainly not numerically.
You do it based on past experiences of thousands of groups of people praising or criticizing different
products. After a while, you learn to know which responses will translate into behavior and which are
merely polite praise or momentary enthusiasm.
[Back to home page]

Some tips on managing a focus group project

Be clear on the primary research purpose

A clear statement of purpose is the single most important step in project planning. It sets the direction
for all that follows. Even when the purpose is general exploration, or you don't know what the problem is,
it is possible to be crystal clear about what you're not clear about.
Identify the problem, the symptoms of which are...
Explore ways to...
Identify the problems and clarify the opportunities...
A good moderator will help you get clear on what you are not clear about.
Get several different qualitative marketing research consultants to tell you how they would
approach your problem.
See who grasps the problem best, who helps you clarify your goals, who simplifies rather than
complicates, who brings more to the discussion, and who understands your problem from a marketing
perspective (rather than as an intellectual exercise).
Pay more attention to their process than their content. The best qualitative research consultant may not
know a lot about your product. It is more important to have a consultant who appreciates your problems,
and has the right process for problem solving than one who is an expert on your particular product.
Do not let a kid, or an amateur, moderate your important groups.
I recognize that brain surgeons, psychotherapists, airline pilots, knife throwers, and qualitative
researchers have to start somewhere. The internship, apprenticeship and mentor systems were invented
to train such high-risk professionals.
It does not matter what background a moderator has come from; I know of superb moderators who were
shepherds, intelligence agents, philosophers, anthropologists, actors. I was even told of a hooker who
later became a superb moderator.
Whatever their background, make sure that you are using moderators who have had many years
experience. And make sure they are not just moderators. They should have a deep understanding of both
psychology and business, particularly what it takes to launch a product.
Do not pick a moderator for "entertainment value"
If you really care about your product and your company, focus groups can be among the most
entertaining performances you can watch. They often have humor, drama, conflict, excitement and even
mystery and magic. It is enjoyable to be observing something from which you are learning.
But keep in mind that focus groups are serious research, and the moderator's job is to work very hard to
get you your answers, not provide entertainment. If a group energy runs down, the moderator has to
figure out why: whether it means anything about the product, for instance, or if people are just tired.
Sometimes, silence has to be tolerated by the moderator in order to bring out deeper thoughts and
feelings. This is very difficult to do when the moderator feels that the client is probably bored and will not
hire him again.
All groups cannot be, and should not be, upbeat, high energy and exciting. Some of my most valuable
groups have been with patients afflicted with a particular disease. These groups are not conducted as
often as they should be, probably because they are extremely painful to observe, let alone moderate. I
guess, like Greek tragedies, they are entertaining to some, but they are sure not upbeat.
List out, indicating priorities, what questions you want answered, not what you want asked.
Don't worry about how the moderator will get the answers, or what questions will be asked, just be clear
about what answers you want, and their priorities.
I have conducted focus groups without asking a single question, yet I was very active as the moderator.
Some of the best probes are not questions at all:
Tell me about...
Give me a picture of...
Compare with each other how you...
I'm going to start a story that I want you to complete...
It is also very important to give the moderator a clear idea of priorities.
Do not demand that the moderator follow the guide.
After all, the guide is just a guide. What is important is that the questions get answered in the discussion
process, whether or not they are actually asked.
The moderator may jump all over the place: there is the logical order of the guide, but there is also
chronological and psychological order. These latter may impose a different progression which the
moderator may not be able to anticipate.
Do not demand that the moderator interpret the findings after each session.
It is impossible and undesirable to avoid thinking about what went on in a group, but try to avoid
jumping to conclusions. Hold your thoughts as hypotheses, rather than firm conclusions. Communicate
these as hypotheses, hunches, guesses or speculations to the moderator, so that you can see if you
agree, and so that they can be checked out in the subsequent groups of the project.
Avoid putting the moderator on the spot for instant findings (rather than hypotheses) during the project,
since it is necessary to observe patterns from group to group in order to corroborate findings. Even
immediately after the last group, the moderator has to switch gears from an information gathering mode
to an analyzing mode, and go back over the information in conditions conducive to insightful thought.
Anything less is asking someone to shoot his mouth off.
[Back to home page]

What to watch for in focus groups

A Checklist

• Verbalizations what they are saying

• Meanings what they actually mean
• Language
• Vocabulary, jargon
• Level
• Empathic Quotes
• Classes, concepts, categories
• Degree of formality
• Non-verbals
• Omissions, what people are not saying
• Abstractions
• New concepts
• Examples, stories
• Contradictions e.g. between thoughts and feelings, statements and examples

Explanations yours and theirs

• Hypotheses
• Implications
• Generalizations and Principles
• Values
• Fundamental beliefs
• Relationships interpersonal, conceptual, logical, emotional, cause and effect,
• Emotional reactions, particularly:
• Enthusiasm, joy, excitement, perking up of interest
• Low energy
• Anger
• Fear
• Curiosity
• Changes in emotional tone
• Patterns intellectual, emotional, behavioral, intergroup, intragroup, cause and effect, between
roles
• Roles and what people do with them
• Degree of consensus, agreement
• Different points of view
• Evaluative criteria
• Influence patterns
• Opinion Shifts
• Persuasion flow