Consumers are Changing – Are your Research Methodologies?
Online
Focus Groups – The Way to Engage and Understand your Customers in our
Digital Age
Technology and its connectivity has totally transformed how we communicate in our professional and personal lives and like most things in modern life, the approach to qualitative research has been adapted to the ‘social era’ by blending the traditional focus group with cutting edge digital methodology…
The
Solution - Online Focus Groups or Online Discussion Boards!
Compared to traditional face-to-face focus groups, it is easy to
understand why online focus group methodologies and online discussion boards (online bulletin boards), are increasing in
popularity with benefits such
as:
- High-quality, actionable insights in terms of relevance, depth and integrity.
- Quality output containing rich verbatim quotations.
- Fast turnaround - Reporting timeline is reduced with highly accurate transcripts immediately available.
- No geographic constraints - National reach including those geographically harder to reach i.e. rural consumers.
- Appeals to all demographic segments including those often hard to involve in focus groups – Young adults, time-pushed busy people.
- Preferred online environment - Those more comfortable with an online environment (teenagers, young adults) respond better from the comfort of their home.
- Heightened quality engagement - Written responses provide time to reflect and synthesise information compared to an average 12 minutes of verbal participation per person in a face-to-face group (2 hours with 10 participants)
- Anonymity - encourages more open and honest feedback.
- Undoubtedly increased convenience - Login twice a day over the research period from anywhere is easier than facing traffic to attend a focus group.
- Reduced domination and influence - To mitigate against ‘group think’ and bias, all comments in a forum can be ‘hidden’ until a participant has commented on a topic.
- Lower overheads – reduced travel and facility hire costs flow on to the client’s budget.
Download our Online Focus Group brochure to better understand our offering:
Roundtable Online Discussion Board Flyer 2019.pdf
How Online Focus Groups and Online Discussion Boards Work:
Procedure-wise posting and commenting is similar to the concept of Facebook and LinkedIn although the project is completed on our private and secure webpage - RoundTable: Bringing Heads Together:
Groups of questions can be scheduled to be released throughout the research project:
Single or multiple choice polls provide quantitative responses to key questions:
Once a poll is answered, there is the option to display the results to date, on the participant's screen:
For more information about running an online focus group contact Rachel today rachel@tsmr.co.nz