Fucus Groups Plan for Scope

Focus Groups Plan for Scope

BA410.601.K3 Marketing Research

Tong (Harry) Xiang

Basic Requirements:

• Participants: We need to carefully recruited our participants with similar ages, regions and income level, and then divide them to 4 groups consist of 8-12 members. All the participants are mouthwash products users.
• Environment: The focus groups interview should have comfortable environment, with circle seating to make participants engage in discussion. Tape recording needed.
• Moderator: Our main moderator should be skillful in group discussions, and be capable of establishing permissive environment. Pre-determined questions and adequate background knowledge required. But main moderator should exercise mild unobtrusive control the pace. Assistant moderator is in charge of handles logistics and takes careful notes.
• Rules: Rules should be told to participants. No right or wrong answers; One person speaking at a time; Turn off mobile phones; Participants should talk and listen to each other.

Beginning:

In the beginning the moderator should create a thoughtful, permissive atmosphere, make ground rules and set the pace of the discussion. The introduction part includes:  1. Welcome; 2. Overview of the topic; 3. Ground rules; 4. First questions.

Example:

Good afternoon and welcome to our discussion session. Thanks for taking the time to join us to talk about mouthwash product in Canada. My name is xxx. We are helping Scope team get some information from customers about your perceptions of mouth wash products. We want to know what you like, what you don’t like, and how our product might be improved. We are having discussion like this with several groups in Canada.

You were invited because you have used mouthwash products. There are no wrong answers but rather differing points of view. Please feel free to share your point of view even if it differs from what others have said. Keep in mind that we’re just as interested in negative comments as positive comments, and at times the negative comments are the most helpful.

You've probably noticed the microphone. We're tape recording the session because we don't want to miss any of your comments. People often say very helpful things in these discussions and we can't write fast enough to get them all down. We won't use any names in our reports. You may be assured of complete confidentiality.