What are focus groups used for?

Often dealing with sample sizes much smaller than those of online surveys or telephone interviews, focus groups tend to extend to greater lengths and offer deeper insights. For this reason, they are particularly useful when an audience is either difficult to reach or small in total population. They often range from 1.5 to 2 hours, and allow for more fluidity in discussion, whereas online surveys are shorter in length and rigid in structure.

The presence of a moderator enables greater probing of participants with follow-up questions to develop a richer understanding of the audience, with questions such as “Why do you feel that way?”, “Where do you go to accomplish that?” and so on. These probing questions can lead to insightful and actionable ‘nuggets’ of information that may go beyond the stated research objectives.

When businesses attempt to answer a business question of which they have little prior knowledge, or are unsure how an audience may behave, focus groups can allow for exploratory research to help fill in the blanks. Exploratory research provides an effective method of generating an array of hypotheses. These findings can either be used to inform a business on the strongest possible answers to these questions, or act as a stepping stone to further validate those hypotheses through quantitative research with a larger sample size.

Focus groups are also effective means of testing various stimuli, such as food and drink, concept descriptions, physical media, packaging, and advertisements. The openness of focus groups allows for greater extraction of meaningful feedback to these ideas, useful for further refinement or selection and rejection of stimuli.