At our third meeting on January 26, we reviewed focus groups and projective methods as discussed in Belk, Fischer, and Kozinets in ‘Qualitative Consumer & Marketing Research’, then discussed two academic articles relating to these topics.
First, we learned how to recruit for, prepare, and run a focus group. To recruit individuals for a focus group it is best to use an incentive like money or food. To run a focus group, it should be recorded and headed by a moderator and assistant. Focus groups are best when there are 6-12 people, the group is homogenous, and work on the principle of anonymity.
Next, we talked about projective methods. These methods help people say things indirectly that are difficult to say directly. There are many projective methods, such as sentence completion, word association, and symbol matching. A group favorite was object personification. This is a non-visual method asking an interviewee assign a brand to a person or anthropomorphic representation to get a deeper understanding of how they feel about certain brands.
Lastly, we reviewed Elliot and Associates’ “Guidelines for Conducting a Focus Group” and an article by Advertising Age “Focus groups should be abolished.” Elliot and Associate guidelines were very detailed in how to recruit, prepare for, and run a focus group. Advertising Age’s article was about Herman Miller and his design for a chair that, despite not being well-received by focus groups, he pushed onto the market anyways.
We ended our meeting by talking about our first interview assignment due by the next meeting, which was to interview a friend about Clemson Football Tailgating. We were all very excited to jump on this assignment!
Arianna, February 2017
