Focus Group Reflection

Working towards meeting Pass 1

A focus group is an example of primary research this is because you are doing the research for yourself. They are used to gather information and get feedback on the product that you are producing. They consist of a group of people of your choice (the target audience) and you ask them questions of your choice that will be relevent to your product for example "what could possible problems be with the product", you would then note down the feedback you get from the focus group. After you have carried out your research then you will go back to the manufactuers so that they can make some changes to the product based on the feedback that you get from the focus group in order to make more money.

 

 Working towards meeting Merit 1

I used a focus group to gather information and opinions on a Doggy Vending Machine, I   asked questions based on the design and features, location and opinions. I had both posotive and negative opinions, the posotive feedback mainly consisted of comments about the design and the product itself, the participants said they thought it was a great way for the dogs to socialize and for the owners to have a break. there were lees posotive comments than negative, the negative comments consisted things such as it could be vandalised, dogs could fight, it could get very messy. overall my findings where that if we were able to maintain a clean environment for the product to be, ensure it would be safe (from vandalism and dogs fighting) and that it would be easy to use then it would be a good product, but otherwise it would be a bad idea.

Working towards meeting Distinction 1
The advantages of using a focus group were:
   I was able to get many responses at one time for example when i asked the queation "what is your opinion on the design of the product?" all six poeple that were in the focus group could all give me their answers in a short space of time.
   Another advantage is that it is helpful to find out a range of different poelpes views for example when i asked the question "would this be a good idea?" depending on the person the view was different for example people wo were dog owners thought that it would be a good idea because their dogs could socialize but people who weren't dog owners or were afraid of dogs thought that it would be a bad idea because it could get overcrowded.
  The disadvantages of using a focus group were:
When i asked a question people might talk over eachother so it would be harder to get everyones responses equally because some people might talk more than others so the results may not be very accurate or good because the views could be for or against.
Another disadvantage is that when people go off the subject of the task or don't answer the question properly for example when i asked the question "what possible problems could their be with the product?" the group started giving comments that were relevent to the question but started to go off the topic andtalking about things such as problems people or dogs could cause rather than the product itself, this meant that some of the responses i got were not as good as they could have been.