It is not unusual to attend a seminar, where a thirty-something year old male or female in a high executive position, will rattle of statistics from quantitative attitudinal research and focus group findings.
Traditional marketers who rely too heavily on focus groups and research should beware of one thing, often the candidates in focus groups may say one thing but act quite differently when they are buying or responding in the real world.
Coke discovered this fact the hard way when they conducted focus groups taste tests. The people participating all said that they preferred the "New Coke" and would definitely buy it too. We all know what happened that time.
Similarly, RC Cola has conducted innumerable taste tests in which participants have each time reported that they preferred RC Cola, to both Pepsi and Coke and yet RC Cola has only a very small market share and ranks No. 5, well below even Dr. Pepper and Cott's Cola.
I remember attending many focus groups in the USA, in the early '80s while I was working for the Canadian Government on the Tourism Account. Almost all of the focus group participants, when asked which magazine they had looked at recently, indicated only upscale magazines like National Geographic or Harper's Bazaar.
Not one of the people mentioned Playboy or Hustler, which had more than triple the readership of National Geographic and Harper's combined at that time.
Ironically, when probed not one person in the focus group could even recall a single recent article from National Geographic or Harper's Bazaar.
Were these people lying? Actually they were, but only because they wanted to come off as smarter.
We all know that many factors affect the response of people in focus groups, from peer pressure to the need to conform to the group or to demonstrate that they are different.
Looking at your customers through a one-way mirror is not the best way to understand them. Nor is a summary of market analysis through someone else's eyes the right way to know how your target audience will react in the real world.
Remember the old party game, where you sat in a circle and you repeated a message that you heard from one person on one side of you to the next person on your other side. They then whispered the same message to the person next to them, only to discover that it had been hilariously distorted by the time it had gone through a full cycle of everyone in the circle.
Marketing data can, in the same way, lose its main message because of filters that are usually subtle but are still capable of altering or distorting the real truth.
Don't get me wrong; I am not making an argument against focus groups, I am simply trying to make sure we learn to read our customers accurately. Our business is one-to-one marketing.
WHY THE 'F' IN FOCUS GROUPS OFTEN STANDS FOR FLAWS - To learn more about this author, visit Billy Sharma's Website.
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Billy Sharma
(Visit Billy's Website)
BILLY SHARMA
Billy holds a Bachelor of Science degree
and is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of J.J.
School of Art (Bombay) and the Hochshüle
für Gestaltung (Bauhaus School of Design,
Germany).
After many years of working for other
companies, Billy founded Designers Inc. In
1999 he became Managing Director and
Creative Director of Brann Worldwide in
Toronto. Under his stewardship the agency
grew three-fold in two years when Brann
Worldwide was elected the number one
direct marketing agency in the world in
2000.
Billy has extensive advertising and direct
marketing experience gained in many
national and international advertising
agencies in Europe, U.S. and Canada. This
has honed his creative skills to help
provide breakthrough creative ideas for
his clients.
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