Corporate Blogging has an interview with Fredrick Hallberg, a Swedish academic, here about open source marketing. This is an interesting quote from it which I like because it's so practical:
"In marketing research the marketer makes the questions and then the
answers are filled in by the consumers. This clearly limits both the
breadth and the depth of the information gathered. In OSM, the
consumers make both the questions and the answers as it is essentially
a discussion. This way the company discovers new ways to perceive their
products and services. Moreover, in a focus group you must both limit
the number of the people present in the meeting and the time for the
focus group meeting, making it a one shot opportunity to gather a very
limited spectrum of the consumers' opinions."
Hmm. Early opinion polls -- most famously Readers' Digest -- relied on people sending back forms. Anyone could take part and they had huge (self-selecting) samples. But when elections came they often got it wrong. Along came Gallup with much smaller samples, but samples that reflected the general population. Surprise, surprise the Gallup polls were far more accurate.
My bet's focus groups will continue to offer the most constructive conversations with consumers.
Posted by: Stephen Newton | December 10, 2004 at 12:15 PM
I've done lots of focus groups in my time and I've become less and less convinced of their value. I would say they don't really constitute much of a conversation with consumers as they interpose a supposedly objective researcher between the brand and its customers.
Have you ever tried having a conversation with someone where everything is chanelled through a third party?
Posted by: Johnnie Moore | December 20, 2004 at 07:05 AM