Marketing Focus Group Activity

One more thread to record my experience of a marketing focus group. Tagged ‘Focus Group’.

I completed this activity in order to answer the following…..

Marketing question: how can we improve customer satisfaction?

Research question: What constitutes a competent exercise therapist?

Reflections…..

I had to change my initial marketing and research questions and they were too focussed and almost warranted a direct answer that would not give further insight.

I had to exclude an amount of the data collected. This included observer comments, discussions about software outside of our remit, and location specific issues, any career management issues, any focus groups politics and any comments about individuals/specific organisations. These themes stray from the marketing research question and/or pose ethical issues.

One of my questions asked participants to complete a sentence and for ethical reasons I had to conduct this before the focus group and individually so that there was no influence from other group members. It was useful in order to gauge customer perceptions of the role that students had to fulfil. Answers ranged from safety to knowing policy, and no one was able to pinpoint one aspect as the most important. I have yet to determine how to merge these findings with those of the group discussion.

There were issues in my sample group in that only one organisation was represented – a number of others failed to attend. This may skew findings in that they could be location specific and only reflect specific experiences.

Identifying themes from a recording was fine but then attaining a frequency count proved a little difficult. Does one person discussing the same theme twice count? If the theme is repeated should it be counted again? I chose to count a theme each time it was mentioned whether that be by the same person or others, as I feel this represents how important it is to the customer.

Two themes that arose were the ‘practical’ and ‘theoretical’ aspects of the job. With a ratio of 8:5 in favour of practical application. This information is useful be use it may help us to design training in order to meet customer expectations. Presently there is an emphasis on ‘theory’ that may need to be addressed.

My observer feedback states that there was no need to hold a period of silence, as participants were fully engaged. I believe my initial question required a moment of silence, possibly because this was the start of the group and people weren’t quite at ease yet. Nine the mess the short silence allowed them to think and prompted someone in the group to kick things off.