What is a focus group

Focus groups are qualitative interviews where a coordinator prescribes discussion topics to a small group of subjects.

These individuals are informed about the facts and willing to cooperate with the focus in question, and are invited to share and compare their own opinions.

The focus group technique is used when there is a need to understand the opinions, behaviors, and attitudes of the target audience with intensity, namely the target.

The Objectives of a Focus Group

The focus group has several objectives to accomplish, the main one being to collect ideas expressed by a group of individuals belonging to the appropriate target.

People are invited to discuss freely and spontaneously various discussion themes such as:

• Find market opportunities;
• Understand how to sell a product;
• Highlight needs, perceptions, preferences, and sensations;
• Understand the advantages and disadvantages associated with the product;
• Develop new ideas;
• Test the questionnaire.

Unlike other techniques that involve interviewing, this does not entail a "one-way" interaction between the interviewer and an individual, but rather with a group of people who help understand their perception of a particular product.

The success of the focus group is linked to the participants' ability to engage in interactive debate and the moderator's skill in directing the discussion.

The moderator ensures that it proceeds in an orderly and comprehensive manner and that the predetermined objectives are achieved.

 How to direct a focus group

To conduct and lead a focus group interview, it is important to follow several phases in order to make the participants feel comfortable and facilitate the discussion with them:

• Recruitment phase: 10 subjects are recruited for each age and sex class, as well as for social and economic characteristics, so as to create a group that is not excessively homogeneous. The subjects represent the target audience; indeed, the recruitment method is not chosen at random;
• Initial phase and proceedings: once the group is formed, the session begins by presenting the objectives, what the procedures will be, and showing and describing the product;
• Analysis phase: to perform the analysis, one can use the "debriefing" method

", namely, for each subject who was asked for a comment, the keyword associations with the product, their frequency, intensity, and specificity were evaluated.

Lastly, the focus group is an effective marketing strategy involving interviews conducted to assess a product's effectiveness on a specific target group.