Writing focus group reports with signifcance

Uncovering the wants and the needs

Editor's note: Joseph Yeager is chairman of Sommer Consulting, Inc., Langhorne, Pa.

People want things. Playwright Neil Simon noted that "If it is not about wanting, it is not about people." If our work in focus groups is not about wanting, then we are into other worlds of experience, namely, demographics.

Let's look at the big picture for a moment. Any behavior by a human requires three universal ingredients: the want to (the motive), the how to (the means to achieve the motive), and the chance to (the opportunity to use the motive and the means). Lt. Columbo, the famous TV detective, knew this a generation ago just as Gil Grissom, the crime scene investigator on the current TV show CSI knows today. If any of these three ingredients is missing, human behavior does not occur. If a detective identifies all three ingredients, they have found the perpetrator. The same is true in marketing. Simple. Also profound.

Folklore and wide-ranging opinions abound in answering the question of how a focus report should be written. When writing a report on a focus group, the priority is finding the motive. By pinpointing the motive, we can tell the client what the participants want and how they define their desire. Other creative insights gained from focus groups must take a back seat to motivation or the results will be out of context. At the very least, other kinds of findings must be framed by motivational concerns or the meaning is lost.

For instance, if you were to cross an open, featureless snow-covered field in the dead of winter in the Great Plains, you have two methods to choose from. You can focus on your feet and where you are putting them, leading you to walk in great circles getting nowhere fast. Or, you can focus on a tree or another landmark in the distance so you can walk directly toward your goal. In focus groups, the motive is the tree on the horizon. What do they want? Everything else is contingent upon the answer to that question.

We need to keep motivation as the clear focus of our work but a general motivational statement alone, such as "I want a new car," is not going to get us very far. To fully understand the motive, we need to define the motive in terms of features and benefits. Features and benefits are modifiers that define the specific process of how the person thinks about what they want. Just as adjectives modify nouns, the specific process of how people go about wanting something modifies what they want. The more specific the features and benefits, the better you will know what people want and understand the details of the process they go through in choosing it.

For instance: "I want a metallic blue BMW with leather seats, a turbocharger and low profile tires with white lettering that will impress my friends" is a very informative motive defined by its features and benefits. Now we have the basis of some sort of persuasion or romance.

Still, someone can argue that gender segmentation (or any other demographic factor) will present a varied set of motivational statements about how they define "wanting a new car." To avoid confusion, one solution is to segment the focus group participants by means (e.g., What can they afford?) and opportunity (e.g., Where can they get it?) before examining motives. Demographics and micro-demographics are tools that clarify only the "how to" and "chance to" behind a decision. These tools should be separate from the focus group, which should attempt to understand motive.

If focus groups are assessing the specific features and benefits of a motive, separate from means and opportunity, they are on the right track. But finding the steps in the decision making process sometimes requires more effort than expected at times. It is not always merely about stated features and benefits.

Once the features and benefits are assessed and means and opportunity are understood, the motive begins to take form, but it is not yet complete.

Complex architecture

Motivation has a complex architecture and a linguistically driven set of rules, similar to grammar rules. By understanding the rules of motivated decision making, we can glean great insight into what people want and the process that they use to make their choices.

For instance, suppose I ask: "If you were to use a mouthwash, why would you choose one?" That is a superficially simple question, but the answer will give us insight into defining the portion of motive that explains how they want what they want. Typically, people will respond with answers like: "I want fresh breath" or "I don't want bad breath." It is all too easy to consider those answers as essentially the same. They are not. They are profoundly different when it comes to persuasion.

The first tells us the person wants a benefit from using mouthwash, particularly "fresh breath." The second tells us the person seeks to avoid something they do not want by using the mouthwash, particularly "bad breath." In our car example, we might tease out the insight that some people don't want a car that breaks down, while another segment wants a car that is fast as a rocket. The characteristics separating "want" versus the characteristics of "don't want" elicit the motivational action.

This kind of insight delves into the delivery system of motives, features and benefits. The system is called psycho-linguistics and it reveals the hidden details that occur in decision making. If we are to tell our clients how to be persuasive, assuming they want to sell more mouthwash, they may want to segment their efforts according to whether an audience frames their motive as what they want as opposed to what they don't want.

One ad would read "Get fresh breath," the other ad would read "Don't get bad breath." Running counter to popular logic, this kind of finding may have nothing to do with gender segmentation, for example. Instead it has to do with "motivational segmentation."

The emotional rationale underlying this difference in ad copy, based on this single psychological variable, is simple. Try this test: Stand in the lobby of a hotel or skyscraper someday that has a mirrored surface arranged so that people can see their reflection as they enter the building. It is inevitable that most people will check out their reflection in the mirror. People are entranced by their own reflection. They can't resist it. Nor can they resist an ad copy that reflects their unconscious linguistic characteristics.

Other examples of these characteristics are whether the focus group participants are general versus specific in their responses or, perhaps, reactive or proactive in their language patterns. Behavioral psycho-linguistics give us the characteristics to define the invisible delivery system of ad copy that resonates with the consumer's mind. The simple idea is to reflect the audience's mindset in the hidden motivational aspects of the ad copy.

This simple example of "what I want" versus "what I don't want" is only one of dozens of such factors found in focus groups that can be captured by a well-designed linguistic scorecard. There are amazing hidden insights into the mind of the focus group participants. The professional literature of psycho-linguistics is full of these insights, which are obtainable if you take the time to tease out the details. By better understanding the linguistic ingredients of the focus group participants, you are better serving your client.

Now, the formula is clear. Focus group reports need to include results on the motives, the features and benefits of the motives, and the linguistic elements that characterize implicit decision making. These elements are the basic blueprint of a report. There is no longer a need to write a focus group report from scratch each time. Any number of features can be added to the framework as suits the given situation. With the structure now revealed, you know all the major aspects of what the client needs to know to pursue their customer profitably. Now, it's time to report it.