This week’s blog I will be discussing qualitative researching and how it is performed. Qualitative research is a collection of data that has been analyzed by observing what people do and say. Qualitative research doesn’t have anything to do with fixed numbers or ratios, but instead listing to and watching consumers. There are no exact quantities, but the most come descriptive words for this is many some or few. This research will identify what consumers believe are the most important issues to them. There are multiple different ways to conduct a qualitative research test. Interviews are the most common usually there will be an interview with a former customers to understand there positives and negatives of the company.
Also Focus Groups which I will discuss a lot in this blog is a diverse group of people to participate in a guided discussion about a product of a company before or after it has launched. Focus Groups provide excellent feedback on a political campaign or television series.
In this blog I want to discusses majority of the time about this video I’ve recently seen for my Marketing research & strategy class. The video is about moderating a Focus group the creator and instructor of this video is Richard A. Krueger, Ph.D. University of Minnesota. Krueger will be conducting a focus group about airline traveling. He has invited a number of people to join him in a discussion that have been traveling by airplanes for the past few years. They will be talking about their experiences on each one of their trips.
You must first identify participant’s specific form this focus group by recruiting them. There must be arrangement made so that you can meet with them and develop questions to ask them. All of these things take place before the focus group even begins. The day of the meeting you should arrive early to make sure everything is running smoothly this is called the setup make sure all the food is ready and the room is set up. Place name tags near the seats so that everybody can have a sense of where they should go. After this test the recorder and the mic to make sure there are no problems with the equipment.
Welcome the participants in to the focus group and introduce yourself to them, make sure to let the participants know that there is food and that there’s name tags on the seats to let them know where they should sit. When starting the actual focus group the introduction should be short. A welcome is always important followed by an introduction to the topic. Some background on the topic that will be discussed. Ground rules for the topic so that everybody is on the same page and the opening question.
Most of the questions at the beginning are focused toward the moderator, but as the discussion continues he will try to get them to start talking to each other instead. Dr. Krueger believes that this is a good sign because it shows that they are really getting involved in the focus group. During the focus group a 5 second pauses after the questions is a very effective technique, it gives the participants a chance reflect, think, and express their thoughts.
Dr.Kruger talks about the ramblers in the group and how to continue with the question when someone starts to talk too much. Dr.Kruger cuts of the rambler by saying “alright let’s see what some other people have to say about this question” right after he say’s this the rambler stops talking to let the others in the focus group share their opinion. A great way to receive some feedback from a less talkative person is to sometimes look at them or call on them. During the focus group Role playing is involved in the meeting to help Dr.Krueger understand what the participants would like to happen in a certain situation. Once the role play is over ask the participant for their comments on the situation, if any of them would have did anything differently
Dr.Krueger asked each participant to create a list of 3 things that are inconvenient for them. Once this is done. He creates a much larger list on a white board so that everybody can see all of the concern and pin point the major issues that are most relevant to the group. He then uses a rating sheet which is basically a survey. He then uses this information for a later discussion in the meeting.
Dr.Krueger believes that a very effective way to get rapid feedback is to use fingers and paper of certain activities. The information is designed to lead you in the direction to why something might be happening. Dr. Krueger then explains some strategy’s to solve these problems and wants the participant’s to give him a thumbs up or down for the idea. The last strategy that Dr.Krueger used is projection. He asked the participants to relate there most frequently used are to an animal and understand why they picked that animal. One women said a skunk because there mainly interested in them self’s and if you mess with them you’re in deep trouble.
At the end of the focus group the moderator should ask the participants to go around the room and explain some of the important things that were talked about in the discussion. At this point after the question has been answered the moderator will ask the assistant moderator to follow up on any questions that are important in this conversation and give a brief summary about what was discussed. The assistant Moderator will ask for confirmation after giving the brief summary to make sure they heard things correctly
In this video I really like how well Dr. Krueger opened up the focus group it really grabbed my attention. His opening question was very important. It forced everybody in the room to speak on their experiences on their most recent airline travel. I think this opening question made there participants more comfortable from the beginning. I also like the multiple strategy’s he uses to get the participants to interact and receive fast feedback. I believe that Dr.Krueger was very successful with this qualitative method. He collected a large amount of helpful information that will improve the airlines services to their customers. I don’t there is anything that I would change about his focus group he asked a lot of the right questions and used important strategy’s to make the process much easier.
After watching this video there’s a lot of strategy’s that I will use in the future. I advise anybody that’s conducting a focus group to watch this video before doing your own. I think it’s at least 1 or 2 things that you will be able to take from this video
Lost Revelation 