Focus groups: How and why to use them in market research (2024)

Customer reviews are indispensable for businesses looking to grow, no matter whether they are online or brick-and-mortar. In this article, we define focus groups, explain how they differ from surveys, and the discuss the benefits and disadvantages.

A focus group is a market research method used to gather qualitative data from your target market.

Focus groups are conducted in small gatherings of participants in an interactive and neutral setting, generally a room or an online video conference. Trained moderators guide group discussions on a specific research topic. They facilitate structured conversation and make changes spontaneously to accommodate in-depth conversation into a particular topic.

Focus groups are a great way to gather firsthand feedback from your customer base and potential customers.

As a researcher, focus groups can help you understand consumer behaviors, gauge interest in new product features, and gather feedback on marketing strategies, and more. Ultimately, focus groups can help you address real customer pain points and make more strategic business decisions. Those who know how to run a focus group will build enough flexibility into the process to be able to make changes on the fly, or dive deeper into a particular topic that may come up during the conversation.

A feedback survey is a questionnaire that’s sent or presented to a large number of people, whose responses represent the attitudes and views of a larger group.

Surveys tend to be classified as quantitative research, which provides conclusive answers in the form of structured data—statistics, trends, and so on. But surveys are great in that they can also include qualitative questions.

For example, after asking a quantitative question like…

How likely are you to purchase any of our products again?

…you might follow up with a qualitative one like:

Which one of our products did you find the most appropriate to your needs and why?

This question will allow you to gather information into your customer’s attitude toward your products and their likelihood to repurchase. In other words, you can get both the hard data and the why’s and how’s behind your respondents’ actions.

Surveys let you ask questions and measure just about anything. They can be as short as one question and as long as several hundred. Answer formats can include multiple choice, rating scales and open-ended questions. In terms of both budget and timing, surveys offer a lot of flexibility as well.

Now that you understand the definition of focus group, let's look at when you should use a focus group—or a survey.

The first suggestion is that you write down the questions you’re trying to answer.

As a rule of thumb, if you want to have a conversation with your customers that will help provide direction, pursue a focus group. However, if you have well-defined questions and need to reach a large group or multiple groups of customers, a survey may better suit your needs.

The combination of the two methodologies can provide tremendous insight, since they can be used for similar goals, such as A/B testing or product development research. The focus group can provide inspiration while the survey may offer validation.

Now let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of focus groups.

Now you have an idea of which research method will suit your goals better. Fortunately there are some similarities in the work involved when the time comes to prepare for implementing them.

The main purpose of a focus group is to collect data on your customer’s opinions and perceptions about your product, service, company, or other research topic. Researchers can then use these insights to make strategic business decisions to improve customer loyalty and satisfaction.

The several types of focus groups include:

Focus groups and surveys can help marketers, product managers and designers conduct user research, which is part of user-centered design.

Usability.gov recommends using online surveys for all stages of a design project:

It also suggests relying on focus groups for the first three stages.
Virgin America is one company that used online surveys to find out how its customers felt about its services. The airline relied on SurveyMonkey questionnaires to revamp its in-flight menu with more fresh food and more potato chips (surprised?), among other improvements to its customer service.

You know well that nothing is black and white in the world of market research and consumer feedback. Focus groups and surveys can reap well-rounded feedback that help you make more informed business decisions. Now you have all the information you need to make an informed decision about how to get effective customer reviews and feedback on your products and services.