If only your brother would switch to your long-distance service, he’d save on every call. If your mother would use the detergent you keep recommending, her whites wouldn’t be so dingy. If your best friend would stop wearing that gaudy green eyeshadow, she’d get asked out a lot more often.
Why won’t people listen to your opinions? After all, you’re only trying to help.
If you can’t find a single soul to worship at the altar of your experience, don’t despair. There are folks out there who not only want to hear your opinions, they’ll pay you for them.
When a company wants to introduce a new product or change an existing service, before plowing millions of dollars into the project, they test it out on a small group of consumers, called a focus group. The in-depth opinions and reactions of the focus group help a company decide whether to implement its new idea.
Participants are generally paid $20 to $100 for two hours of their time, which they might spend taste-testing a new snack from Hostess, trying out a brush with better bristles from Crest or watching Ford’s new line of car commercials.
Companies that don’t use focus groups rely on other types of market research, but participants don’t get paid for those, says Shaela Saxon, vice president of client services at the Greenfield Consulting Group in Westport, Conn. “It’s either a telephone survey, or maybe those women who run up to you with a clipboard in the mall. Those provides a large quantity of data, but it’s not very in-depth.”
“A well-run focus group can provide an extremely in-depth understanding of what consumers want, and what their needs and fears are,” says Sharon Ray, president of Ray Research Inc. in Winnetka. “It helps companies understand their own products and leverage their strengths in the marketplace.”
Because the results of focus groups are used to make important marketing decisions, such as whether Aunt Jemima should introduce a new pancake flavor or the First National Bank should offer interest-free checking, it is crucial that participants know what they are talking about, that they are indeed users or potential users of the product or service that is being tested.
For example, if the manufacturer of Gatorade is running a focus group on its new orange flavor and a participant has never tasted a sports drink before, her opinions won’t help, because she has nothing to compare this drink to. If she doesn’t like sports drinks in general, she won’t like this one; also useless information. If she is allergic to oranges, forget it.
In addition to qualifying for the study, the best candidate for any focus group is someone who is “very honest and very comfortable expressing their opinions,” says Saxon.
How it works: When a company wants research done, it hires a consulting firm, such as Greenfield or Ray Research, to design a questionnaire and run the group, or several groups in different cities. The consulting firm hires a facilitator in each city, who locates the participants and provides a meeting site.
Every facilitator maintains a separate database or subscribes to a larger one. A list of people who might fit the profile for a particular study is generated, cold-called and asked a series of screening questions, including their age, marital status, number of kids and, most importantly, their product usage. So if the session were about whether Xerox should lower the prices on its home copiers, the facilitator would try to find people who work at home and have or need a copy machine.
It’s crucial, stresses Saxon, that people don’t misrepresent themselves in this screening interview just so they can qualify for the study and make money by participating.
Sue Brody, president of Fieldwork Chicago-O’Hare Inc., recalls, not too fondly, that “one participant actually pretended to be a doctor” in a focus group on medical products.
“We are always interested in talking to fresh people,” Saxon assures. “But we don’t want people who participate in focus groups very often, more than once a year. For some studies we only want people who have never participated at all.”
Facilitators have several internal checks to prevent these “professional respondents,” people who consider focus groups a part-time job, from participating.
“We are really cracking down on people who pretend to qualify for every study or sign up with every facilitator’s database,” says Ray. “If one does slip through the cracks and we find out, that person will not be paid.”
How the sessions work
If you are selected for a focus group, you are usually notified by phone of the location (they are held in the city and the suburbs) and the time (usually evening sessions are held). What exactly happens when you get there?
“It’s a very laid-back atmosphere,” says Saxon. “The moderator of the group tells everyone that this is not school, this is not a test, there are no right or wrong answers, because there is no such thing as a wrong opinion. Then they launch right into the testing, which may consist of watching a video, sampling products or answering questions about how much they like a product and what kind of changes they would like to see.”
“Consider it a casual group discussion, like you might have with a group of your friends over dinner,” says Kevin Smith, president of Smith Research in Deerfield.
“It was kind of interesting to know that my opinion would help change the future of that particular subject,” says Anne Wheaton of Chicago, who took part in a focus group about mortgages last year. “I got to do it because a friend of mine who had done this before gave my name to the focus group people, and then they called me.”
The payment is rendered, usually in cash, at the end of the session. Occasionally gift certificates or products are given instead. Often free meals are served during the session so that you won’t be hungry and distracted.
Now that your opinions are raring to go, how can you get your name into a database?
Frequently, names are selected randomly from the phone book, or, as with Wheaton, through referrals from participants. Sometimes facilitators purchase lists of names. In general, they prefer to call you, instead of having you call them, suggests Smith. However, written inquiries, complete with address, day and evening phone numbers, age and occupation are sometimes accepted. It is recommended that you submit your name to only one database, to prevent yourself from being blacklisted as a professional respondent.
Facilitators that operate focus groups in the Chicago area include Adler-Weiner Research/Chicago Inc., Fieldwork Chicago-O’Hare Inc., Focus Scope, Illinois Center Market Research, Ingram Research Inc., Kapuler Survey Center, Luhrs Marketing Research Corporation, Market Facts, Mid-America Research Inc., National Data Research, National Qualitative Centers, Plaza Research and Smith Research.
