Market research: When to do phone interviews over focus groups

Market research, such as market sizing, target marketing, market segmentation, product positioning, pricing, and customer satisfaction research, requires good data for the results to be credible. Obtaining reliable customer or prospect data needs good data collection.As a start up or an expansion stage company, if you’re wondering how to do your primary research and you are trying to decide between collecting data through a focus group and phone interviews, the following situations will help you determine when phone interviews work better than focus groups:

Phone interviews are better when the type of research you’re doing is complex: If you’re doing a study that requires your respondents to answer multi-step questions (e.g., implementing an enterprise application), it’s easier to walk each respondent through the set of questions on the phone. In a focus group environment, this will get confusing and chaotic. Phone interviews provide you with a “cleaner read”: In a focus group, respondents’ thought processes could be very easily influenced by other group members. Since phone interviews are one-on-one, respondents’ answers are less biased and more their own.Phone interviews are more “anonymous” and are better for gathering sensitive and in-depth information: With a phone interview, you can keep the respondents’ answers confidential. Respondents don’t have to answer questions in front of a group of strangers, which might hold them back from being open. The one-to-one relationship with the interviewer on the phone can help solve this. Phone interviews make it easier to reach your target audience: Maybe there aren’t too many of your target customers in the location/region you’re running your focus group. Phone interviews allow you to “cherry pick” prospects from across the country, and even the world. You have limited time and want to get started with your research right away: With phone interviews you can start interviewing as soon as you have your first recruit. You won’t have the time lag that you’d otherwise have with getting a group of respondents together, deciding on a location, a moderator and planning an entire event; you can do your phone interviews by yourself. Better participation from respondents: Since respondents can take phone calls from anywhere, they can be more flexible, which increases the chance of participation in the study. Also, the same faces tend to show up at focus groups; phone interviews allow you to talk to new people from new markets. So, with phone interviews, not only can you get more participation, but you can also get better quality participation too. Phone interviews are much cheaper: In-depth focus groups can get very expensive. Not only do you have to pay for the moderator to lead the session, you also have to pay him/her for summarizing the data and presenting it to you. In the case that you want to attend the focus group yourself, you have to add in the cost of your travel, lodging and other expenses, along with the financial incentives required to pay respondents for their participation. Conversely, if your phone interviews are short enough, a lot of times you can get by without paying anything. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts or counter arguments.