Comments on: What Caucuses and Focus Groups Have in Common

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:34:15 +0000

Ben – great comment. A couple responses:

To a) I guess I just wonder how “town hallish” the primaries can be. I think the local voters are just as susceptible to the slick marketing that’s reserved the primaries (like all the TV ads).

To 2) I agree with you there. My commentary here is harsh simply because finding the right discussion guide and purpose for a focus group so that they are effective is, in my experience, rare.

To 5) I think this is the key. It’s a lot different for someone to simply tell you “yeah, I’d buy that for $50,” and them handing you a credit card to do it.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:20:49 +0000

Good post, but a couple of things.

A) Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the country but what they allow the rest of us to see is how candidates do when they actually have to sit down and talk to real people. Think of them as product testers. They kick the tires, ask difficult questions and generally check to see if it/they are above board. The rest of us rely on slick marketing messages from candidates and on the spin provided from news sources and blogs.

2) Focus groups. Yeah, I’ve sat through a lot of bad ones. But the trick is to know what you want to learn and write a better discussion guide in order to find out what you want to learn, and ask lots of probing follow up questions to flush out inconsistencies and make respondents dig past their surface canned answers.

3) Conventional wisdom seems to think that Focus Groups are putting a bunch of people in a room with mirrored glass and M&Ms. In fact, I think that focus groups are more like a Swiss Army knife that you can use for a number of settings and in a number of ways…if you know how to use them.

4) agreed, focus groups are part of the input and shouldn’t represent the output.

5) as far as tips go, if you are doing product testing in groups, agreed, not ideal, tell the respondents that you have some samples available to buy at X price and then see how many offer to pay up. This is a better test than a show of hands and it allows you to probe the considerations that suddenly pop in their head.

By: What we’ve learned from Iowa and New Hampshire « Brett’s Blog

What we’ve learned from Iowa and New Hampshire « Brett’s Blog — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:35:14 +0000

[...] January 9, 2008 · No Comments This post supports my earlier post of how caucuses and focus groups are similar. [...]

By: Brett

Brett — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:07:02 +0000

Tony – you’re right. It just rarely happens, and what most people think is “good” (get product acceptance) in fact is bad.

Got any quick tips on what makes focus groups valuable?

By: Tony Flanders

Tony Flanders — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:49:08 +0000

All you have really claimed is that focus groups done badly are not very good.

It’s also true that done well and used properly they can be extremely valuable tools to decision makers.