To celebrate Global Focus Group Day, an interview with consumer behavior strategist Jeanne Corrigan. Jeanne discusses the history and enduring relevance of focus groups in brand strategy and advertising research. We explore how technology and COVID have transformed qualitative research, and Jeanne considers the role AI will play in shaping market research’s future. Jeanne also shares insights from recent focus groups and offers advice for brand managers and aspiring researchers.
Episode Transcript
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Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS:
Jeanne Corrigan: Focus groups are just essentially group conversations. It’s really a dynamic of having multiple perspectives so that you can make sure you’re seeing all sides and views of a topic.
Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS. Fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye: a strategy-led full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. We’re publishing this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS on July 9th, 2024, which has been designated Global Focus Group Day. To celebrate, we’re going to explore the enduring popularity of this method, which has become a cornerstone of qualitative market research. Focus groups provide insights that shape brands’ marketing strategies and advertising campaigns, as well as those of politicians and their parties, of course. Our guest today is an expert in consumer behavior and qualitative market research. Jeanne Corrigan is a strategist with over 20 years of experience who combines digital technologies with human connection to give her clients a more in-depth understanding of their audiences. Jeanne has helped shape strategies for many long-term clients, including Arizona State University, American Greetings, Navy Federal Credit Union, and Nestle, to name just a few – and she’s also a contributor to Bigeye’s research and strategy team. To discuss the appeal of focus groups, how they can inform brand strategy, and help craft more inspiring creative briefs, I’m delighted that Jeanne is joining us today from Austin, Texas. Jeanne, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS
Jeanne Corrigan: Thanks, I’m glad to be here.
Adrian Tennant: And Happy Focus Group Day!
Jeanne Corrigan: Yes, it is!
Adrian Tennant: Jeanne, could you start by explaining what focus groups are and how they differ from other forms of market research?
Jeanne Corrigan: Sure. Focus groups are just essentially group conversations and they can be large and have 10 to 12 people, or they can be smaller and have four to five people. It’s really just a dynamic of having multiple perspectives so that you can make sure you’re seeing all sides and views of a topic. So if you want to talk to more people at one time in a cost-efficient way, focus groups are an option when you don’t want to take the time and expense to do one-on-one interviews and then synthesize all that information. You can get a lot of input at once.
Adrian Tennant: How do the brand marketing teams you work with typically use focus groups?
Jeanne Corrigan: A lot of times it’s to get an in-depth understanding of their audience, who they want to develop for, communicate with. And so they can hear the consumer talk about the brand or a concept in their own language, understand the differences between segments. It can inform strategies and decision-making when they’re in their beginning stages and you really need to land on the most consumer-driven perspective.
Adrian Tennant: Well, I mentioned that today is Global Focus Group Day. How did focus groups develop into the research methodology we know today?
Jeanne Corrigan: Well, it really started in the 40s when the government wanted, as part of the war effort, to see what messages consumers supported, from bonds to different ways of supporting the war effort. And that was really a non-consumer, non-CPG way of looking at it. But then in the 50s, as modern advertising agencies, brands, strategists evolved, along with the big products and CPG brands, they wanted to be able to understand consumers. And there was a lot of pioneers, a lot of people at the beginning, but Saul Ben-Zeev was really a pioneer. He helped develop focus groups as a consumer marketing methodology.
Adrian Tennant: Now, you mentioned Saul as a pioneer in the field. Could you share a bit more about his contributions?
Jeanne Corrigan: Sure. And his Global Focus Group Day is July 9th, which happens to be his birthday. And he’s really one of the first qualitative practitioners. He started in the 1960s. He created two really prominent research companies. And so his approach was really the open and flowing discussion rather than a straight Q&A where he could uncover new insights, follow the consumers where they led as far as understanding motivation, how their perspective on things. So it was much more human-centered in a lot of ways and participant-led rather than moderator-led. And then he opened, I think it was in the early 80s, that he opened the very first modern focus group facility. So they had recruiting, they hosted the focus groups, where it was once in kind of a really boring, not very comfortable focus group room with a really poor audio, poor viewing for the clients. He took it forward past kind of that utilitarian outcome-based look and said, if the participants are more comfortable, they’re going to share more. They’re going to, you know, connect more. If the clients have a better experience, if they can see the participants connect with them better than everybody, it kind of moves beyond this functional process to more of a experience with more flexibility.
Adrian Tennant: Let’s talk about the process of planning and conducting focus groups. Jeanne as the lead qualitative researcher at Mosaic Insights Group, what are the typical steps involved?
Jeanne Corrigan: Sure. Well, typically, once the client and people who need the research will determine who they might want to get points of view from, they go through a review process or a proposal process. And that’s based on either a brief or set objectives about what you want to learn. And then the researcher comes back and determines the correct methodology. If focus groups is the best methodology, then you go forward with that. Talk about the approach. You can do focus groups in facility. You can do them in more non-traditional places. You can have it be different sorts of formats. So you have to determine the structure, who you want to talk to, develop that profile, and then you have a screener. that you typically work with a recruiter, a professional recruiter who finds the people to be in the focus group that qualify based on your specs. Although these days a lot of clients have lists, a lot of customers have their own customer lists and that validates, they know that person has purchased or that person has interacted with them. So you can do it either way. You create a discussion guide where you outline the topics based on the outcomes and the insights that you need. You select the participants and then you have the groups and you have the conversations. And depending on if there’s different segments, different age or gender breaks, you then create a report based on the best kind of synthesis of those insights.
Adrian Tennant: Great. What are some of the most surprising or impactful insights you’ve gathered from focus groups?
Jeanne Corrigan: Oh my gosh, that’s a big question. I would say the things that really stick out in mind, one is way back earlier in my career, but we were doing a series of focus group discussions with major lingerie brand customers. And this lingerie brand was very much about making an impact and having it be sexy and different kind of occasion to wear the lingeries that were more expensive. But the women really told us they needed every day. They wanted full coverage. They wanted to feel good in their everyday lingerie, but they didn’t need it to be, you know, kind of va va voom all the time. And so we took that direction and made recommendations. And when that product launched, it was the most successful launch of any product in that company’s history. So that was great. And really it just spoke to how you think the inside of a thought process and you really need to go out to the source and understand how they use your products, how they think about it and what they need. And then let me see, another one would be, I did a lot of Gen Z work last year. I had, and it was just serendipitous. I had three different clients in three different sectors that wanted to understand this emerging important generation. And there’s a lot of beliefs about Gen Z and I just, I fell in love with them. They are bright and funny. And to me, you know, they work hard. They have to, because the world is a little stacked against them. And I found them to be very smart, very practical. And I was really glad I got to know them on multiple fronts so I could get a kind of a 360 view.
Adrian Tennant: Love that. Well, on this podcast, we track the influence of technology on brand marketing and advertising. How have you seen the practice of conducting focus groups change over the course of your career?
Jeanne Corrigan: Well, I think the biggest thing is technology, of course, as you’ve talked about, is just the tools that we have and the alternatives to have group discussions or have different consumer interactions. without having it to be this somewhat artificial interaction point where you’re in a room and you’re not really in their lives. And what’s happening now is that you can do some things online that track behavior, and then you can go in and have a conversation based on what you learned while integrated into the consumer’s everyday life. There’s a lot of acceptance of remote technologies, and so focus groups happen now on Zoom, on different platforms, because that allows you to meet the consumer where they are. They’re in their home, typically, or in their work. They can be geographically spread out without having the cost and time expense of going all over the country. And you can find harder to find audiences because you don’t have to focus on a single market or a single area of a city. So it’s really allowed us to find more ways to accurately understand behavior, how consumers make decisions and then open that conversation up to get the why and to really understand once that consumer is aware of what they do to talk about where that goes from there.
Adrian Tennant: Priscilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing was recently a guest on IN CLEAR FOCUS, discussing her book, “Collaboration is the New Competition.” She talked about the impact that COVID-19 had on in-person focus groups and the facilities where they’re conducted. Jeanne, have you seen any lingering changes in how your clients ask you to approach qualitative research?
Jeanne Corrigan: Absolutely. Absolutely. The pandemic was a seismic shift in qualitative research because at a certain time, there was a belief that you had to go in person out in the markets and have these conversations in a focus group facility. And now because of the acceptance of remote technologies, which was not universal before COVID-19, because we had been, colleagues and I, had been trying to pitch projects that were more remote or that were multidiscipline, where you might have an online piece and an in-person piece. And there was a fair amount of resistance, but once COVID hit and everybody was at home and that was the only way you could do it, it really did turbocharge the acceptance of and the understanding of what you could do with those remote technologies. So what’s interesting is you can really evaluate now what’s needed. Is it important to travel to certain destinations? Do you need geographic diversity? If you want more people, it’s kind of what we call it like a quali quant sort of study. You can add more people within your budget and have it go further if you’re going to stay remote or do a combination of those things. So it just, it gives us a lot of flexibility and a lot of ability to really tailor the methodology and the way we do things that meets the client’s needs, both objective and insight wise, as well as financially.
Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message.
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Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Jeanne Corrigan, a consumer behavior strategist and expert in developing, moderating, and analyzing qualitative focus groups. Are there any categories or circumstances where in-person focus groups are really necessary, in that, for whatever reason, they just don’t work online?
Jeanne Corrigan: Yeah, I think it’s both categories and situation because remote can work in a lot of situations. But if you need people to work together or to really play off each other and have a back and forth brainstorming or iterative conversation, then in-person works a whole lot better. If you want to do anything with shopping, if you want to be in a store or have them recall products or present things in front of them than in person is much preferred because the immediacy and kind of it’s very hard at this point in our evolution for people to remember why they do what they do or even be aware of it. There’s so much information that we take in now every day. If they’re reacting in the moment or they’re determining kind of product development or product usage as a group dynamic and kind of, if you’re ideating in product development to move something forward and you’re really talking about possibility, then in-person is preferred and I think much more effective. You can do messaging, you can do concept testing and different things remotely. It depends on if you just want reaction or if you want to build from that. It’s really how much you need to pull out and have that dynamic between the moderator and the participants that determine which is a better fit.
Adrian Tennant: And what are your thoughts about testing packaging designs, particularly for CPG, where there may be a variety of packaging solutions under consideration?
Jeanne Corrigan: I’m thinking of the packaging studies I’ve done and when there are multiple iterations that, you know, you might have Tyvek prototypes that you’re showing and you want to have it be in their hand, and you can’t create unlimited amounts and send them into people’s homes. Then yes, in person is a better way to have that interaction and that kind of real-world understanding of how they use it and how it fits their needs. Especially if there’s some nuance between concept A and concept B, those are a little bit harder to suss out in a remote environment. And so if you have them interacting with the product and you’re watching them and watching the facial expressions, the body language, the conversations participants have with each other, then that’s something you can only do in person.
Adrian Tennant: Great, thank you. Some critics argue that focus groups can sometimes lead to “groupthink,” or that participants might not always express their true opinions. Jeanne, are these criticisms valid?
Jeanne Corrigan: Oh, sometimes, sure. I think that it depends on the situation, but you can definitely take steps to minimize that. I have found, though, I’ll tell you over time, over the past 20 years, the younger generations are much more used to sharing their opinions unfiltered. And they feel like telling you how it is in a realistic sense, so positive or negative. I don’t see a lot of hesitation with them. There’s not a real desire to be polite at the expense of what’s real or what the truth is. So while I think in a more polite society where we were less direct, that was a bigger problem, but I find that there’s a lot of different viewpoints that come to bear and rarely do I see people just agree and I don’t feel like they actually agree. But you can also take steps to minimize that in the conversation. I typically do some type of pre-work or online board to anchor people to their behavior and to their responses. And so you can start from there and get them in that mindset and in that kind of foundation of speaking from their own place of truth and their own point of view. You can also capture answers individually and then share them and discuss them as a group. Or if you feel like somebody’s going along, you start with them. You ask them first to weigh in and then move through and end with the person who has the strongest, absolute opinion. So there’s certainly ways to moderate that and keep things true to the individual.
Adrian Tennant: As you know, we love examples on IN CLEAR FOCUS. So Jeanne, could you walk us through a recent focus group you moderated?
Jeanne Corrigan: Sure. A recent in-person, and it was the first time I’d done in-person in a minute, and it was in a facility. And the reason we did that is because it was a really iconic product, but it was in the business-to-business space. And the product team wanted their users, people that are already using this product, to see it, to interact with it, to see some prototypes, because they were talking about how to evolve this product design forward. And they didn’t want to do anything That would lessen the value or take something away that was really valuable and they wanted to really brainstorm and have a wide kind of blue sky view of what the possibilities were to enhance the functionality and the value of this really. It was a really workhorse piece of equipment. And so we needed to find a really distinct and specific target audience. And that was the biggest challenge, was really finding the right people in these two cities to come and have conversations. They hadn’t done research on this very successful product in a while. And so it really did inform the decisions going forward about the strategic brief of how to move forward, what were the priorities and what was less important. And it was a really, it was an interesting project just on multiple fronts.
Adrian Tennant: We’re seeing artificial intelligence’s impact across many aspects of marketing and advertising, including market research. This includes the ability to conduct interviews online using AI bots in place of human moderators. These can not only change their questions based on the participants’ responses but also conduct the interview in whichever language the participant is most comfortable with. Jeanne, how do you foresee focus groups evolving? Will human-moderated groups with real people remain relevant?
Jeanne Corrigan: Absolutely. I see AI as a partner, as a way to make things more efficient, to possibly involve more people and have those conversations. But while AI can generate human-like back-and-forth discussion or text questions, the interpretation of those answers and judgment really stays with the human moderator, the human researcher. So there’s a lot of work-intensive parts of qualitative. It’s a very kind of hands on and when you do the analysis it can be work intensive and so if you have the ability for AI to help you net some themes or look at some patterns because that’s what. It’s really good at then it frees us up to what we’re very good at, which is understanding human behavior, human insights, and seeing what’s possible. You know AI can create themes as good at patterns and understanding existing data, but as far as interpreting the meaning or the motivations behind certain decisions … there’s no body language with AI. There’s no understanding of what’s being unsaid or what’s, you know, kind of the nuances between audience segments and different things. So I think AI can tell you what already happened, but it doesn’t help you know what’s next. And that’s where I think qualitative, human-centric qualitative will always have a place.
Adrian Tennant: For brand managers or advertising professionals listening who haven’t used focus groups before, what advice would you give them on getting started?
Jeanne Corrigan: I think you have to, you know, first go through the blocking and tackling of what do you need to learn, what actions are going to be made or informed based on this research that you’re doing and determine if groups are the best methodology. So you can be very intentional about who you want in the research, because the consumers that you include really define the quality and really the relevance of the input you’re going to get. So there’s a lot of ways to think through it, though. If you don’t have a big budget, you can be pretty streamlined about it. There’s a lot of guerrilla ways to do group discussions. It doesn’t have to be this very formal process. You can do it a lot of ways. And you can see kind of how, if there’s a way you want it to be new and engaging, if let’s say it’s ideation or a consumer collaboration, you can bring the client and the consumers into the same room and really have them take down the two-way mirror and put people in the same room and go back and forth about the learnings and the insight and the development. So there’s a lot of ways to do it. You don’t have to be really tied or tethered to any one thing based on your needs. And of course, for me, I would say you want to work with an experienced researcher who can get, you know, the most value and the most output from that investment.
Adrian Tennant: Now, if anyone listening is considering a career in market research, what advice would you give them?
Jeanne Corrigan: That’s interesting. It’s really, what is your natural strength? I think you really have to understand what it is that your aptitudes take you. So if you want a right answer, if you want pure analytical, you know, can prove it out and project it, that’s quantitative. And there’s a lot of ways to go into quantitative. If you like to understand human behavior, really dig underneath what people are saying, and can connect with them and resonate with them and be in a place where they will share with you that can go to qualitative. So I think first you have to decide who you are. and what path you go down that way. And then there’s a lot of ways to be in research now. There’s online platforms, both qualitative and quantitative. There’s big community groups like C-Space and Dynata has huge communities. And so there’s a lot of ways to be in research that there weren’t 20 years ago. So it’s a way of really researching what’s available and what’s the best fit for you.
Adrian Tennant: And what’s next for Mosaic Insights Group? Do you have any upcoming projects that you can share with us?
Jeanne Corrigan: I do. I actually have some fun things coming up. I’m working on, for a long-term client, a project about financial well-being because that’s a huge subject right now. It’s like, what does it mean in today’s world to feel financially secure? to feel like you have your questions answered and that you’re on a path that will, you know, get you where you want to go. I think the whole idea of financial well-being has been changed. How secure we can feel with how much uncertainty there is in the world. And then on the flip side, I have a project in the fall about social expression. online messaging, greeting cards, how people connect, shop, what messages they want to say, how they want to celebrate different occasions. So I really have kind of both sides of the human experience right now coming up.
Adrian Tennant: Yeah, that does sound like fun. Well, it’s been a great conversation, Jeannie. If listeners would like to learn more about Mosaic Insights Group, what’s the best way to contact you?
Jeanne Corrigan: They can email me at Jeanne, J-E-A-N-N-E, at mosaic, M-O-S-A-I-C-I-G dot com. jeanne@mosaicig.com
Adrian Tennant: Jeanne, thank you very much for being our guest on IN CLEAR FOCUS
Jeanne Corrigan: Thank you. I had a great time.
Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Jeanne Corrigan of Mosaic Insights Group. As always, you’ll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at bigeyeagency.com; just select ‘Insights’ from the menu. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.
TIMESTAMPS
00:01 – Retail Revolution promo
00:59 – Introduction to Focus Groups
04:21 – History of Focus Groups and Saul Ben-Zeev
06:36 – Planning and Conducting Focus Groups
08:24 – Impactful Insights from Focus Groups
10:03 – Evolution of Focus Group Practices
11:45 – Changes in Qualitative Research Post-COVID-19
13:45 – Advertisement for “How To Use Customer Data”
17:28 – Criticisms of Focus Groups
19:23 – Recent Focus Group Moderation Experience
20:44 – AI’s Impact on Market Research
23:03 – Advice for Starting with Focus Groups
24:26 – Advice for a Career in Market Research
25:35 – Upcoming Projects at Mosaic Insights Group
26:36 – Contact Information for Jeanne Corrigan
26:59 – Conclusion and Closing Remarks
