What is a focus group?

A focus group is defined as: a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.

It is important that we test our own products at this (rough cut) stage because we can change it to appeal to our target audience.We want to make it work more effectively and the only way we can do this is to have input from other eyes. It will inform our post production decisions. 


We looked at some youtube clips of previous focus groups. The first one we watched was a clip from the apprentice where he was pitching different biscuits.

We evaluated why this pitch went well. Its because....

• He didn't have a fixed answer that he was looking for, so without trying he was receiving new information. 
• He was asking open questions, didn't try and lead conversation 
• He was extremely friendly. 
• He didn't challenge any of the views and try and defend his product, so he welcomed all of their views and ideas. 

We then watched two other focus groups that didn't go so well.

 




They didn't seem to be as successful because: 

• because they both had a fixed outcome in their mind 
• they ignored comment that challenged the product 
• they have blinkers on, their blind to any type of criticism 
• they made a mistake by explaining how the audience is meant to interpret what they have seen; which inevitably ruins the point of a focus group as they are just feeding the audience what they want to hear. 

As on thursday we will be running a focus group ourselves we will test every individual product by... 

• Video:projected on big screen, and voice memo response
• Digipak: physically make it as accurately as possible so that we can actually hand it to them 
• Homepage: get them to go on it themselves to see how easy they found it to use and how fun they found it.
• We want to also ask how well they work all together. Any differences between them?