Is The Focus Group Dead?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Cathy Taylor has a good pitch for killing the focus group in her recent Social Media Insider column. I’m not ready to say R.I.P. to Focus Groups just yet, but clearly there’s more to listening than rounding up your perceived target market and observing them behind close doors. I laughed a bit looking at the quotes below, especially the one describing the Sci-Fi Channel’s recent re-branding effort.

"The testing we’ve done has been incredibly positive." -David Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel to The New York Times on Monday about its proposed new name, Syfy. So far, a post on Sci Fi’s own blog about the new name contains more than 900 mostly negative comments, and has more than 1500 Diggs.

"What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research." -Neil Campbell, president, Tropicana, North America to The New York Times upon pulling its revamped packaging in February after consumer complaints.

Related articles