Focus Groups Are Dead!
An executive said during a meeting with a definitive and resolute tone while talking about a green messaging platform. That’s his opinion, but the statement reflects an underlining frustration with relying too much on what customers say during these group discussions. Why?
I have always found focus groups to be insightful (and fun, especially when people are irresistibly propelled to make design comments on colors, shapes, or other ideas); but I have been always leery to rely too much upon them. Asking a group of 8 to 10 people to comment on messaging or topics for 2 hours does not match the reality of a person’s focus on those messages or topics of 3 to 5 seconds at most. The results are often frustrated statements like the one of the executive aforementioned and a key conclusion: a gap between stated intentions and actual behavior (can you hear the executive saying: “but you told me that that matter to you!”). We see the manifestations of this gap in our own proprietary research, EcoPinion , which is accessible on the EcoAlign site. Each day, the media is flooded with polls showing strong stated propensities towards a more sustainable and green lifestyle and people willing to pay the price for it. And yet, actual purchase data doesn’t reflect consumers’ stated intentions.
My intention is not to discount people’s opinions and focus groups are a great research tool, but I would like to offer a new perspective.
I believe that today Social Media and its various tools and applications can offer a real, honest view (the actual behavior) of what matters really to people and what drives their discussions and arguments (complementary to focus groups). Group discussions, information sharing, group interests, comments on blogs, videos on YouTube, file sharing, etc. They offer great insights into what matters to people (the pulse) on an ongoing basis (not at a point in time like the focus groups) and I believe less biased because people write facing a computer screen (all you need is a couple of strong personalities in focus groups and the answers will all be skewed - besides, lets face it, some people come for the food or the money). If you add to Social Media the power of some of the latest iterations of web-based behavioral analytics packages (like those offered by CoreMetrics) that track user behavior online and form accurate customer profiles (Amazon is a big user of this tools and, I might say, a rather successful one) then you can have insights into behavioral drivers and segments all at once.
So, focus groups are not dead, they are alive and kicking and in front of our eyes every day – just a click or two away. Companies in the energy space (especially utilities) should embrace social media as a way of marketing their energy efficiency and renewable energy offerings.
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