Focus 25 Research & Consulting

When we began helping businesses with their research needs, one of our clients asked us for a list of things we could do to help them.  This list of 25 items became the basis of Focus 25 Research & Consulting.  The list remains the best indication of how we can help you:

When you're considering solutions, don't forget that research is always an investment. Every research project should produce ROI to help your bottom line.

1. Behavioral Focus Groups:  Use our proprietary techniques to conduct behavioral-oriented focus groups that more accurately predict consumer behavior than traditional methods.
2. Attitudinal Focus Groups:  Measure consumer perceptions of products, product categories, brand names, etc. using traditional focus group techniques.
3. Positional Focus Groups:  Specially modified focus group technique determines current positioning and/or explores future positioning and the underlying consumer behaviors, attitudes, and motivations underlying the positioning.
4. Product Design Focus Groups:  In-depth consumer evaluation of new or existing products and services, with emphasis on utility, feature set, pricing, and barriers to consumer adoption.
5. Product Evaluation Focus Groups:  Rich information on usage of products or services by existing customers.  Emphasis is on actionable information regarding feature set, product marketing, and preparation of collateral materials.
6. Product Marketing Focus Groups:  Test concepts and images, and determine appropriate vocabulary to use in advertising, collateral, and product positioning statements.
7. Product Purchase Process Focus Groups:  Obtain rich descriptions to obtain the pattern of the purchase cycle from initial product awareness through purchase to satisfaction.  The goals of Product Purchase Process Focus Groups are to identify the specific process by which purchasing behavior occurs and identify prospective improvements that can shorten the purchase cycle, improve product marketing efforts, or otherwise improve the quality of the customer purchase process.
8. Web site design and performance focus group:  Obtain detailed consumer feedback on Web site design elements, navigation, utilities, etc.
9. Focused Interviews:  Conduct in-depth interviews with executives or others who are most difficult to recruit to focus groups, using active feedback to get focus group-like results.
10. Product development surveys:  Quantitative surveys provide in-depth, generalizable information on prospective features, optimum feature set, price sensitivity, and other items related to product design, development, and marketing.
11. Product introduction panels:  Products are placed in homes of likely adopters who provide regular feedback on product installation, use, and satisfaction.  The panel runs at least three months, and can run up to two years (or longer) so that over-time patterns of usage can be identified and integrated with product development and marketing efforts.
12. Price sensitivity analysis:  Development of specific demand curves for products and services to determine optimum price point
13. Consumer satisfaction surveys:  Obtain systematic, quantified, and representative data from existing consumers to determine customer satisfaction with the product/service and brand, word-of-mouth effects, basic purchase process information, and suggestions for product improvement from existing users.
14. Product comparison study:  Quantitative survey technique anonymously obtains both rating and ranking information on your products and competitive products to create a competitive matrix to aid in product positioning.
15. Formative messaging research:  Qualitative exploration of consumer perceptions of messages, vocabulary, images, etc. for use in crafting advertising campaigns.
16. Evaluation messaging research:  Quantitative or qualitative research on the effectiveness of specific messages and/or campaigns.
17. Political focus groups:  Testing of messages, issues, perceptions, and candidate positioning for political candidates or political issues.
18. Triangulated product development research: Combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to provide the most comprehensive product development research, providing information that is both rich and detail and generalizable to the target market.
19. Triangulated product messaging and product marketing research:  Combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to provide consumer feedback that is both rich and generalizable. 
20. Triangulated product satisfaction research:  Combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain generalizable information about product usage patterns, satisfaction, etc., along with in-depth exploration of underlying attitudes and behaviors.
21. Mining of existing data:  Analyze existing data sets ranging from consumer satisfaction reports to product sales information to identify patterns of customer behavior and opportunities for increasing sales.
22. Content analysis:  Perform quantitative analysis of printed or recorded information to develop a picture of images, attitudes, opportunities, etc. from published sources.
23. Subjective product evaluation (Consumer technology only):  Our staff conducts a detailed evaluation of a new product, including strengths, weaknesses, product feature analysis, and market potential.
24. Retail experience analysis:  This research is a more sophisticated form of the “secret shopper” method in which we obtain first-hand information on the consumer experience in purchasing and using the product or service in order to identify barriers to consumer purchase and opportunities to improve the sales process.
25. Sales associate interviews:  We conduct in-depth interviews with targeted, retail sales people in order to identify relative product positioning, consumer feedback, and methods of improving retail opportunities.