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Do Focus Groups Work? An Interview with Dan Ariely

24 Feb Posted by Dennis Demori in Research | 2 comments
Do Focus Groups Work? An Interview with Dan Ariely


Here at CP we’re big fans of Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of “Predictably Irrational.” Ariely has some interesting thoughts on the pros and cons of focus groups, one of the most debated topics we face as Marketers:

“One of the things that I think companies do to a large degree that makes very little sense, is the use of focus groups.  So think about what a strange idea is that we take 10 people who know basically nothing about your project and you put them in the room and you let them talk for a while and then you take the, whatever they came up with, as a consequence of these two hours of random thinking and you base your strategy on it, to a large degree.  And I don’t want to say that focus groups are always useless and also uninformative, but I think that taking this data and then relying [on] it as extensively as companies do, I think it’s crazy in many ways.

And the reason I think companies do it is because when these people create a sentence or an idea, it’s very easy to say, “Joe, focus group 17, said this,” and it can help you create and formulate an idea around it.  When if you said “87% of the people said X,” it just doesn’t have a face, it doesn’t have a desire, it’s just not as concrete and therefore, people are not as excited about the notion. So I think the focus group is incredibly useful as a persuasive attempt to tell people what to do, but as a way to find out information, it’s not as useful as people think it is.”

I can understand Ariely’s reasoning, but we need to look at a couple things:

First is the way groups are structured. Done properly, they can be a useful tool as discussed in Testing to Destruction.

Secondly, we shouldn’t place too much weight on groups, just as we shouldn’t place too much emphasis on Simmons or any other piece of data. We need to look at the overall context of what’s being said as we formulate our strategies and executions.

So my question isn’t whether or not focus groups are successful. Instead, how do you think we can improve the method to provide better results? What are some creative ways that you’ve seen groups used in the past?

Focus Groups Aren’t As Useful as Companies Think” – BigThink

photo credit: ConsumerClarity.com

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