l When
companies use focus group in their researches?
As China
presents a very potential market open to the whole world in many industries, an
increasing number of foreign companies try to step into the Chinese market. For
most of them, marketing research is considered as an absolute necessity before
they launch in large their business. Among the consulting methodologies, focus
group is an important tool used as a major qualitative research method to get
more direct and in-depth information within a group of six to eight people. It’s
often applied by companies to explore the real and deep ideas of consumers
which traditional surveys(questionnaire) can hardly achieve. Generally,
companies prefer focus group when their objectives are fixed in regard to
product concept, product testing, product packaging testing, advertisement
concept, consumers’ satisfaction and users’ purchasing actions.
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How to
select and target the participants to build up focus group in China?
We determine
what category of people should be the participants in focus group according to
the treated subject and fixed objectives. For the most of time, focus group
consists of people who share similar backgrounds and purchasing experience. In
China, as people have a strong social stratum concept, it’s better not to
gather people whose social ranks are so different, only when it’s a necessity.
Although Chinese people are at least bi-lingual(Mandarin, Sichuanhua, Yueyu,
Shanghaihua), some people have still been accustomed to speak their dialects to
express to the point .in a comfortable way. So, we should make sure if the
group members can communicate without problems. Since focus group in China treats more
often the in-depth and more professional subjects, we should invite the
professionals and key persons in a certain industry. But how can we make it
because of busy agenda of those professionals. Firstly, you should find their
contacts by SNS or other channels and then get in touch with them to tell about
the subject. It’s an art to do with this, for some would consider the call as a
trouble or joke, especially for Chinese who are rarely involved in these
activities. Thus, you should prepare very well your presentation of your
company , your activities, your objectives, time cost and their recompenses. In
China , some people say they are professional, but in fact , they are far away
from this level. In this case, we can use a simple questionnaire or some
questions on phone to evaluate the pertinence of the participants. We can also
make use of our personal relations to find these contacts, which will be more
easier. More importantly, we should avoid that the participants know each
other. Besides, if a group of 8 people is to be set up, we’d better have two or
three extra people in case of emergency.
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How to
handle the process of focus group in China?
As the
invited should be important persons or governmental officials, it’s better to
send them visit cards in honor of them who will later participate more actively
in the discussion. Sometimes, people from different provinces have different
expressing habitudes, so the communication requires the moderator’s good
understanding and translation of Chinese. If necessary, he or she is ought to
facilitate the exchanges of each other and promote a good atmosphere. Owing to
Chinese restraints and shyness, the discussion may be led to a silence, so the
moderator should be humorous and have skills to motivate the participants.
Chinese people like to express their opinions after well thinking over the
subject, so it’s better to leave some minutes for them to think and find
arguments . Thus , they’ll be more confident in their statement. As the
discussion of focus group in china lasts generally 1-2 hours, so a break is often made
to offer them some snacks, which will warm them up to rebegin the discussion.
During the break, the moderator can also establish a closer relationship with
the group members so that they can be more natural in the second half. In
addition, the moderator should lead all
the participants to talk around the fixed subject with various questions asked
in a interesting way to concentrate their attention.
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After
discussion
After the discussion is over, the moderator
is to draw up a report in which he or she describes and analyzes what were
mentioned in the communication with the help of radio or video records. Once
the consulting project is accomplished, the consulting companies should better
send the analysis results to the participants who can recognize their
importance and value in the project. In this case, the consulting companies
come to enlarge and strengthen their social relations which they can use in
future projects. At the same time, it helps the participants to know about the
consulting industry’s importance in marketing, so he is probably willing to
attend to it afterwards and themselves can also ask for consulting companies
for similar services.