If you're thinking about conducting surveys to find out more about your customers, you may want to read this post by Seth Godin, "Surveys". Godin highlights the four types of surveys worth doing.
It's interesting that he would point out that focus groups "are a poor use of anyone's resources". I once attended a focus group where we talked about the menu display of a major company that sells fruit smoothies. There were about ten of us in this focus group each with different opinions about how a menu should look.
If it were the intention of the company to get feedback on the menu, a better approach would have been to survey the employees of the company. Employees would probably know better whether or not customers had trouble reading the menu, what areas of the menu customers gravitate to, any confusing areas of the menu, etc.
What are your thoughts on surveys and focus groups?
Photo Credit: Kai Tsang
I agree that focus groups are not the best use of resources for true market research. I was once on a focus group panel where the leader moved the group's opinion in one singular direction, which I did not agree with. Rather than asking open questions, she asked leading questions and got everyone nodding like lemmings... when she asked at the end if everyone agreed with her position, they all nodded their heads in agreement (even though at the beginning of the session they didn't agree with the premise). I stood my ground, however, and said no.
What I wonder, though, is what value the company got out of the focus group? Did they get the message that the public can be lead to agree with their political message? Or did they come out believing that people already see things the way that they do? If they came away with either of those opinions, they would be pretty mislead...
Posted by: KermitFan | October 26, 2007 8:44 AM | Permalink to Comment