ABSTRACT
Focus groups and brainstorming are fairly unstructured group processes for collecting information about a variety of topics. Focus groups allow you to gain a broad understanding from the group’s perspective. Focus groups are commonly used in marketing to gauge a group’s reaction to a planned commercial for a product or service. Several versions of a commercial can be shown to a focus group to assess the impact of each version. Because focus groups are loosely structured interviews, participants are free to introduce new ideas and directions. They can identify how a commercial strikes them and offer suggestions on how to improve the commercial. Likewise, a focus group could center on a product such as software like a word processor. The software developers could assemble a group of people who use the word processor and ask them about the product. Participants could describe what they liked and what they did not like about the word processor. They could mention new features they would like to see and indicate what current features they did not use. They could describe difficulties using the word processor. This allows the software developers to understand their product from the user’s perspective much better and, thereby, improve the product.
