Results of the Survey on Online Focus Groups

Results of survey on Online Focus Groups published in the October 1^st issue of this newsletter:

Online focus groups is a relatively recent phenomenon, requiring not only technology investment, but also technological proficiency from focus group moderators and participants. Only 50% of the survey respondents have had experience with conducting an online focus group, while all of them have conducted 'live' groups.

While the most obvious advantage of conducing 'live' focus groups was noted to be unrestrained ability of communication during the session, it appears to be the only strong arguement for conducting such groups. According to the survey respondents, advantages of online focus groups include:

Immediate data collection of data
Time and cost savings
Ability to receive input from geographically dispersed participants, no travel is required for clients or moderators
Recruiting and encouraging participants
Ability to incorporate qualitative/quantitative hybrids

One participant even noticed that online focus groups allow researchers to attain "equal or better data quality".

Unfortunately, only 11 people responded to our survey, so the data received has only anecdotal significance. We hope that our readers will participate more actively in these short surveys that are designed to get a feeling of the most pressing strategic difficulties companies encounter.

If you have suggestions of survey questions to be asked in conjunction with the next issue of our newsletter, "Online Surveys", please, email info@gantrygroup.com.