Excuses, Excuses
Three top reasons for not doing focus groups and why they’re really just cop-outs.

In their book Parenting with Love and Logic, Jim Fay and Foster Cline, M.D., remind grown-ups that kids will come up with all manner of excuses for not doing what you want — e.g., “But Billy gets to go outside without doing any chores.” The recommended counter-maneuver is the broken record routine: Respond to each and every excuse with the same unwavering answer, such as, “I’m sure that’s true, and when you’re done cleaning your room, you’re welcome to go play.”

Marketing and advertising agencies sound a lot like Love and Logic parents when it comes to focus groups. Most clients have their reasons for evading them — driven in no small part by the business world’s growing emphasis on hard numbers vs. opinions and inference. Yet many of the arguments against focus groups are really only excuses. Trade avoidance tactics for ingenuity, and focus groups return actionable insight no other marketing tool can deliver.

Excuse #1: It’s too vague. “The single, biggest issue for clients is that focus group results aren’t quantifiable,” says Lane Ware, senior VP of strategic consulting. “Even when you see most of your focus group participants nodding, you want to be able to tally it scientifically.”

Focus groups are qualitative by nature. But while it’s unwise to count up remarks made in focus groups and apply the result to all of your customers, there are techniques that can help you glean tangible data from focus group commentary.

One of these techniques happens to be a cardinal rule of focus groups: Don’t try to get by with just one group. “You want to look at the trends you’re seeing overall, versus the specifics,” says Ware. Many experts recommend at least two different groups because discussion in the first tends to be broad and exploratory, and subsequent groups let you zero in on issues brought to light in the first session. “Plus, you always run the chance of having that one alpha participant who will dominate the conversation,” Ware points out. “So even if you have a great moderator, you want more than one group to balance it out.”

Another way to make focus group revelations more quantifiable is to use them in combination with another research tool, as CCG did for Spencer Gifts. “They wanted to revamp their loyalty program,” says Sallie Burnett, CCG VP of national sales. “But since its members were extremely loyal, it was crucial to gauge their reaction first.” As part of the focus groups, the CCG team created worksheets and asked participants to fill them out. “We used the insights from the worksheets and focus groups to develop an online survey for the entire membership,” she says. “The results showed the client that they were better off building on the existing structure than creating a new one.”

Combining focus groups with other research techniques also helps you resist the temptation to stretch the capabilities of either tool. “Say your ladies’ department purchases are declining,” says Ware. “If you try to ask why in a survey, you’re assuming you know the answer [since open questions are usually ineffective in a survey]. But in a focus group, participants might tell you the clothing is too young and trendy for them. You can find out why a trend is happening over time.”

Excuse #2: It’s not statistically valid. Most experts say seven or eight participants is the max in any focus group — not even close to a representative sample of your target audience. But Ware points out that this opens the door to creative techniques that aren’t practical in a survey or other larger-scale research initiative.

“For one client,” says Ware, “we asked the groups ahead of time to create collages of their lives and bring them to the sessions.” Using images or words cut out from magazines, newspapers, packaging, etc., participants were asked to visually represent what products they buy, how they spend their time, and other aspects of their lifestyles. “You could see which customer segments they were in just by looking at their collages,” Ware explains. “It was a great way to confirm what the data was saying and the segmentation methodology we were using. Then we were able to focus on our main objectives and make better use of the available time.”

When selecting focus group participants for Mervyn’s, Ware’s team asked each person to save any retail mailings they received and bring them to the focus group. “We wanted to see what they were getting, of course,” Ware concedes, “but the samples they brought helped spark discussion about communications, which was one of our objectives.”

Excuse #3: It’s a can of worms. “You’d be surprised how many companies are afraid of what they’ll hear from the customer,” says CCG President and CEO Sandra Gudat. “Their feeling is, ‘No matter what these people say, I still have to go forward with this initiative.’”

“But that’s where your opportunity is,” observes Ware. “It’s a chance to discover other important issues in the process of meeting your specific objectives.”

She points to Southeastern financial services provider BB&T, which used focus groups to test a debit card initiative. “We were doing some analysis using lifestyle segmentation,” Ware recalls, “and there were certain clusters you’d expect to use debit cards — like the young guy who’s very technology-savvy. But when we talked to participants who fit that profile, they said they liked the purchasing power and flexibility of a credit card. It’s something we didn’t set out to learn, but it helped the bank better position the product.”

In focus groups for retailer Mervyn’s, the groups were defined partly by geography. “We did a California group and a Colorado group,” Ware recalls, “and the Colorado session took an unexpected turn — they started talking about how they didn’t like the ‘Mervyn’s California’ branding. It wasn’t their lifestyle; they felt it was all for people in California, and that what works there doesn’t work everywhere.”

Another regional department store also learned something unexpected from focus groups. “We began to see that customers were very confused about the company’s positioning,” says Gudat. “For a while it was high-end, then it went back to a moderate line. Customers didn’t know what they were going to get.”

When the issue came up in the session, CCG’s team brought in one of the company’s senior vice presidents to observe the discussion. “He was surprised to see that customer perceptions were much different than they had thought,” Gudat adds. “The result was that in addition to meeting their specific goals, this company saw that they needed to get the message out and say, ‘This is who we are.’”

Of course, some issues that come up in focus groups will be more irritating than illuminating. “Your merger may have happened two or three years ago,” says Ware, “but people have to get their gripes with corporate out of their system before they can move on to other topics.” She adds that it’s smart to anticipate some baggage, plan ahead for it, and let it run its course. “You have to allow them time to get it out. If you try to avoid it, it will just rear its head later on in the discussions.”

No more excuses. The best advice about focus groups is to “get into it.” Rather than fixating on how vague and unscientific they are, recognize the unique opportunity those characteristics offer. Work it. Plan for it. Let your discomfort with it catalyze new ways of looking at your company’s challenges. You can start by filling in the blanks in the statement: “If I knew _________, I could use that information to _______.” You might find yourself anxious to hear what your customers have to say.

CCG has spearheaded focus groups and follow-up strategy for numerous organizations as diverse as Wells Fargo, Dillards department stores and The Bowling Proprietors Association of America. For more information about our customer research, data analysis and strategic consulting expertise, contact Lane Ware at 1-800-525-0313 or lane@customer.com.