IGCSE Business Studies Conference, March, 2010

Groups of 10 or 11 Pick up a selection of products – chocolates, sweets, fizzy drinks, fruit juice Which of these do you like? Which would you buy? Would you be happy to pay 100 THB for chocolate X? Would you eat one of drink Z every day? (Questions would have to relate to specific products – although you could simply try different types of sweets, chocolates fizzy drinks contrasted to healthier alternatives such as fruit smoothies etc.

 Qualitative data on who likes, who buys, where etc  Observations on how they eat them. Do they nibble the chocolate before eating the wafer? This indicates that they like to play with their food before eating it. Gives valuable insights into consumer behaviours  Competitive advantage  Reduces risks  Reduced duplication  Converting new ideas into added value to the business  Look at the effectiveness of Kit Kat ads… Aust one with Panda… Chiang mai panda…

TOTALS

TOTAL

 Do you purchase either of these products?  Would you purchase either of these products again?

Anecdotal comments:

A method of primary research where a group of participants provide quantitative and qualitative information. It is typically organised and director by a moderator. A tool to generate and answer research questions.

 Product  Service  Concept  Advertisement  Idea  Packaging

 Participants are often chosen based on their ability to provide specialised knowledge or insight into the issue under study.  Participants will answer specially constructed questions – their answers will be used to generate statistics, often like “78% of women think this product is effective” or “3 in 5 men would be happy to use this product every day”.  They are free to talk about/ discuss the product – this provides us with qualitative information.

 Understand differences in perspectives  Uncover influential factors  Hear a range of ideas  improvements  how to best market  price range  Qualitative evidence for pre-existing statistics  Capture qualitative evidence of comments and language used by the target audience - e.g. teenagers would describe a computer game in a different way to adults.

AdvantagesDisadvantages √ Time and cost efficient √ Practical and useable information √ Can ask questions directly √ More structured than ‘1 on 1’ interviews - no time wasting √ Group interaction stimulates memories – can gain more √ Applies a human face to statistics –through language, descriptions or thoughts.  Not a natural social sitting  Less time with each participant  The moderator can lead to the answers they desire – interviewer bias – unfair.  Group dynamics may lead to lack of individual opinions  More difficult to explain questions participants do not understand

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