Focus Groups

[boazcan]

I am about ready to start the process to get a good quality focus group of target customers together in one place for about 2 hours. I will be paying them, either cash or gift cards, around $100 for their time and input.

I would like to put a nice thorough questionaire together to get into their thought process of picking a home service company (1st), then a carpet/tile cleaning company (2nd), what they look for in online and print advertising to choose these two. The next part will go over the "in home" experience of a service company. Likes/dislikes.

It seems like they would be obvious, but I would like to pick the brains of 10-15 unbiased unrelated women in my target market.

Any suggestions on questions to ask that will "pull" the real information out? Has anyone done one of these on their own?

 

[Shane Deubell]

I would put some pictures together and ask them to describe.

 

[hydracat]

Read "Selling the invisable by harry beckworth" and you'll see why focus groups are useless in the service market. They always tell you what they think you want to hear. People told mcdonalds they would like a healthy alternative like the mclean and then bought bigmacs in the drivethrough.

 

[Shane Deubell]

I would ask more specific questions

What type of offer would you respond to the most if you were buying NOW?
A, B C

What type of offer would you respond to the most if you were thinking of buying in the future?

We dont just want the immediate buyer but also learn what are the seeds we can plant for future buyers.