1. Getting Clear Insight to How Customers Think
Introduction
Getting Clear Insight to How Customers Think
What are Focus Groups?
How Focus Groups are used in Business and Government.
Focus Group Creation and Use.
How to properly create focus groups
How to effectively use focus groups.
Evaluating Results.
Material that will be covered in presentation.

2. What are Focus Groups???
Focus Groups are a group of people, that are brought together, and asked to share their opinions about a product or service.
The definition and personnel of focus groups.

3. Where Focus Groups are Used
Business Use
Drive Marketing Strategies
How customers think
Government Use
Forming election strategies
Publishing trends
Impeachment rhetoric
Places where focus groups are readily used.
Business vs. Government use
Both use focus groups to get to the same goal.

4. Creating Focus Groups
Hiring outside consultants vs. Internally established groups.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Choosing a Moderator
Internal vs. External
The steps that companies must go through to properly choose a moderator for the group.
Creating focus Groups within the company or hiring an outside consulting company to be the focus group.

5. Hiring Consultants
Hiring external Consulting companies to establish and moderate the focus group.
An option in focus group creation.

6. Advantages of Consultants
Limited knowledge of products
Will not make bias decisions
Have favorable results
Trained, experienced and competent professional researchers.
Advantages of using a consulting firm to conduct focus group

7. Disadvantages of Consultants
Expensive
Unable to conduct groups on your schedule
Do not want to risk an unsuccessful group
“I am familiar with my product and can ask the right questions”
Disadvantages of using a consulting firm to conduct focus group
Cited from:
Greenbaum, Thomas L. Doing your own Focus Group is like fixing your own plumbing. Marketing News. V25 n11. May 27, P. 8-9

8. Choosing a Moderator
Someone who knows how to benefit from group dynamics
Can use techniques that reduce negative influence or feedback
Traits of effective moderators
What you should look for when choosing a group moderator.

9. Choosing a Moderator Can control the dominant group member
Can motivate the shy member to participate
Use techniques to extract the maximum amount of information possible
Continuation of Traits of effective moderators

10. Internal Moderators
Internal moderators can save money, but can inhibit group output
Chance that participants will refrain from showing concern or acting negatively to ideas.
Have great knowledge on product, which could intimidate participants
Reasons why Using internal employees as focus group moderators.
Inhibits focus group potential output.
Having a large knowledge of the products that are beings evaluated can negatively impact the group by creating bias opinions which can intimidate other group members.

11. External Moderators Extremely helpful in designing groups
Professional moderators bring experience from different research situations
Objective
Able to extract a lot of information from group members
Advantages and reasons that companies should use external focus group moderators.
Characteristics and abilities of good focus group moderators.

12. Facilitating Focus Groups
Key Concepts
Advantages and Disadvantages of use.
Things to be careful of.
New Technology.
Main topics of how to use Focus Groups
Things to take into consideration when using focus groups
New Technologies that focus groups use.

13. Facilitating Focus Groups
Key Concept
Explore a topic to form ideas, not definitive answers.
Focus groups provide insight in exploratory work to help companies realize the range of issues, perception of these issues, and the intensity of feelings of their customers.
The main concept of focus groups, what they do and how they do it.
Cite taken from:
Vincent, Lynn. 7 Deadly sins of focus groups. Bank Marketing. V31 n5. May 1999 p 36-39

14. Advantages of Focus Groups
There are only a limited number of people asked to participate, so participant downtime is reduced.
Gives excellent insight onto what customers believe.
Low cost.
A list of reasons of why focus groups are a good resource tool of gathering ideas and data.

15. Disadvantages of Focus Groups
Yield a wide range of ideas on a topic, not definitive answers
Results could be misleading
Only show a small percentage of what population believes.
Inexperienced moderators can impair or ruin expected results
A list of topics that give several reasons of the disadvantages of Focus groups.
What focus groups cannot provide for a company
How experienced moderators can make or break a focus group

16. Things to be careful of
As focus groups are relatively expensive, companies must make sure they get their monies worth.
Choosing and distinguishing between good and bad group moderators.
Different things that companies have to do to get the maximum out of the focus group.
There are companies out there that coach group members to answer certain questions a particular way, giving false answers to questions, which in turn
diminishes positive group productivity.

17. New Technology New voting devices
Participants can vote confidentially to questions by pressing buttons on a hand held device.
Computers can instantly process information for immediate debate
New technology that is available for focus groups. Focus groups utilize these new technologies to enhance productivity.
Computers
Voting Devices

18. Evaluating Results Establishing valid results from Focus Group.
Distinguishing between different results to see what the possibilities of advance are
Different ways companies should go about evaluating the results focus groups provide.

19. Real world Examples
“Focus groups were used to provide strategic input to elections of Prime Ministers and presidents, feedback for action by political groups or companies”.
Quote Provided by:
Cowley, James. Anyone can run research focus groups, right? Marketing News. V33 n5. Mar 1, P. 15

20. Summary From this slide show, you should have learned
What Focus Groups Are
How to Create and what to look for in creating focus groups.
Differences between Internal and External focus groups.
Summarization of topics learned.

21. Summary Advantages of hiring consultants
Choosing an effective moderator
How to properly facilitate focus groups.
Summarization of topics learned.

22. Summary Things to be careful of when using focus groups
New technologies used
Real world Examples of Focus group use.

23. Works Cited
Cowley, James. Anyone can run research focus groups, right? Marketing News. V33 n5. Mar 1, P. 15
Vincent, Lynn. 7 Deadly sins of focus groups. Bank Marketing. V31 n5. May 1999 p 36-39
Greenbaum, Thomas L. Doing your own Focus Group is like fixing your own plumbing. Marketing News. V25 n11. May 27, P. 8-9
References used in work