Know-How Exchange : Customer Behavior

You need to give us a little more info:
- what is the subject?
- where will you conduct the survey?
- how long are the sessions?
- how much data will you collect and in what format?
- what help or harm would come from group interaction?
- Ultimately, what decision are you trying to make?

Thanks, JohnnyB.

Running a focus group requires a fair bit of skill, since it's easy to have the group basically come to agreement on something (bias) especially based on the group's facilitator ability. You may be better served by doing 1-on-1 interviews (of 15 mins each). It takes less time, you get information that may not come up in a group setting, and can focus better on their questions/needs/concerns/thoughts.

Like Jay, I would question whether focus groups are the right research technique or not. You'd be better off defining the objective and expected use of results, and then letting a research professional recommend the technique.

If you're committed to focus groups, however, and you understand the limitations of that kind of research, you need to consider the following cost items for your budget: facility, recording/transcription, professional moderator, development of both the screener and the moderator's guide, analysis/interpretation of results, participant incentive, recruiting cost, and presentation/discussion of results and next steps/indicated action.

Because this is qualitative research, you should probably develop some idea of the follow-up research that you'll use to quantify what you learn. You don't want to make any major decisions based solely on what a few dozen people say in a research setting. You need to make sure you don't fall into the trap of believing the respondents are truly representative of a large population.