How can interviews and focus groups help identify unmet market needs?

Based on my experience as an international researcher and focus group moderator, my observation is that mature companies outsource conducting interviews and focus groups to market research firms, while startups do it themselves to stay close to their customers and save costs. In both cases, careful respondent recruitment and skilled moderation are vital. Participants must represent the target demographic since customer preferences differ dramatically. An expert moderator probes deeply, using group dynamics to yield insights from all participants, not just vocal ones. With simultaneous translation and bilingual moderators, multinational sessions are also possible and can uncover how preferences vary widely between countries.

In my view Interviews and focus group discussions are helpful as they offer direct access to the ideas, emotions, and experiences of potential customers. Focus groups and interviews are crucial for finding unmet market demands. Through one-on-one interviews and group discussions, researchers can obtain rich qualitative data that provides insights into the needs, preferences, and behavior of their customers. This first-hand knowledge is extremely helpful in identifying opportunities and unmet demands that can guide the creation of relevant goods or curated services.

Interviews and focus groups provide direct insights from potential customers, revealing their preferences and challenges, helping identify unmet market needs through firsthand qualitative data and in-depth discussions. These methods offer a nuanced understanding of customer experiences, desires, and gaps in existing solutions, informing strategic decisions for product or service development.

During Focused groups, some participants do get influenced by the opinions of others who are more vocal in the groups. During interviews most of the time participants can not articulate their needs. So in both cases it is important to have a moderate who has a soft skills of going beyond just words and understanding the feelings of the participants.

A Focus group is a qualitative research method where a moderator interviews a group of participants on a topic. Focus group interviewing can provide insightful data at relatively cheap costs while allowing the researcher to observe the participant's body language and engage with them deeply.

Another insightful concept is the utilization of Qualitative Data for Quantitative Research: Qualitative insights from interviews and focus groups can inform the development of quantitative surveys or studies. This combination of qualitative and quantitative data provides a more comprehensive understanding of market unmet needs.

Focus Groups and In-depth interviews along with other tools that may appear in a design thinking or ethnographic toolkit can potentially reveal unmet needs and provide insights into motivations. Use Focus Groups and In-depth interviews to reveal small faults (Bug Lists) and failing major solution sets (Paradigm Shifts) that can be used in concept generation idea sessions. While there are many ways to identify unmet needs, I believe as marketers we should focus our efforts on uncovering ideas that will result in innovations with sufficient demand to merit investment. Our research program should not only include qualitative techniques, but also quantitative studies designed to identify segments, refine product concepts, and predict demand.

To me the most important thing to consider is the recruitment of qualified respondents and an experienced moderator who can extract the required information from the group. The depths and insights to unravel the unmet needs can only be given by the right people

In my experience, interviews and focus groups provide valuable insights into consumer perspectives, preferences, and pain points. Through various open-ended questions, these methods allow participants to express concerns, helping businesses understand gaps in the market. The next crucial thing is to able to analyse the responses to bring our insights that can uncover hidden challenges and guide product or service development to meet those unaddressed demands.

Interviews & focus groups are valuable tools for identifying unmet market needs by gathering insights directly from potential customers or target audience. Interviews & focus groups allow you to engage with individuals who represent your target market or customer segments. By conducting open-ended interviews, you can explore their experiences, challenges, & desires related to a particular product or service. Focus groups offer the advantage of group dynamics, where participants can build upon each other's ideas and generate novel insights. The success of this method in identifying unmet market needs relies on effective recruitment of representative participants & well-designed questioning techniques to encourage open & honest responses.

I like to prepare a flexible interview guide for customer interviews. It's important to get buy-in from the stakeholders who will receive the insights from these interviews, so sharing an interview guide that includes the questions to be asked and what information will be collected is an important first step. Be cautious about adding too many questions. The goal is a conversation so interviewers should be flexible about where to probe for more, when a customer just wants to be heard, and when to take on next steps or set expectations for customers.

Preparation for focus group interviews: 1.Confirm focus group objective 2.Secure 6-10 (12 at most) participants; session is 45-90 minutes long 3.Utilize experienced moderator 4.Moderator develops Discussion Guide 5.Conduct structured session 6.Develop analysis

As a moderator, I would emphasise the importance of flexibility. It's crucial to recognise the broader context of the research and to be alert to new, interesting insights emerging from the responses. This should be done without losing track of time and while adhering to the discussion guide. However, capturing unique and surprising insights that were not anticipated during the preparation of the discussion scenario can be incredibly valuable. Often, the greatest value lies in those unexpected answers.

By employing well-structured interviews and focused group, marketers can gather qualitative data that goes beyond surface-level insights, helping them uncover unmet needs and subsequently develop products or services that cater more effectively to their target audience

Prepare for interviews and focus groups by setting clear goals, creating good questions, inviting the right people, choosing a comfortable location, training moderators if needed, having materials ready, testing technology for virtual sessions, ensuring ethical practices, piloting your approach, recording responses, and staying flexible during the conversations.

Successful focus group interviews are conducted in phases. 1.General overview questions: discussion questions about the session, product/service and general participant feedback 2.Specific questions: these questions are more to the point and direct; open-ended but adjusting the discussion based upon feedback from respondents; allow a moderator to adjust and make formal and informal questions 3.Wrap-up questions: Opportunity to ask respondents for their feedback and overall outstanding aspects/feedback about the product/service

I prefer a max of 6 in a virtual and 8 in-person to optimize interactions. To increase engagement, introduce interventions or activities. Get creative in how customers tell their stories or explain their thought processes.

Focus group doesn't need much participant to get the perspective we need... I'd use about 6-12 from the important personnel or individual or officlasti want to get their and reactions on.

In my opinion it is important to create a relaxed environment in order to see the "true" side of the interviewees/participants. From there you can then analyse reactions, responses and input to establish the quality of participants and the clarity of their responses

Focus groups are much harder to moderate that IDIs because of the need to manage multiple participants all at once. Every group has dominant personalities and others who need more coaxing to contribute. A good moderator must be able to ensure that everyone can voice their opinion and keep dominant members in check. Good moderators also have at their disposal several projective techniques that can overcome some of the problems of groupthink and social-desirability bias. Consider a RIVA-trained moderator if you really want to do it right. On the other hand, one-on-one interviews are much easier for amateur moderators. Work from a good discussion guide. Use open-ended questions. Ask for stories and probe -- ask "why" a lot.

I typically like to record the sessions. Hearing from consumers often helps “sell in” a new program or offering. Moreover, a written, recorded document of the research and recommended next steps are useful within an organization.

All verbatims must be recorded religiously. Techniques such as Word cloud or Empathy maps can also be deployed to analyse data collected. However it is important to always take a step back and really think about what is the customer really trying to say here? What did he / she say and what it really mean w.r.t. the larger context? Sometimes researchers tend to limit their inferences to the boundaries of information captured in discussion. This can leave out larger contextual inferences. Hence analysing data from focus groups and interviews is actually an involved exercise with a lot of brain work and should not be done superficially with just limiting to the data sample collected.

Do your homework in advance and ask questions that allow people to provide authentic feedback from a place of trust. If you go into the research with an open mind and truly listen, you will get insights that you never anticipated. It is the surprising answer that will create more discussion and deeper questions that will create real insights.

At the end of the focus groups I moderate, I always ask - is there anything else you would like to share with our team that you think would better serve our customers/patients? I never presume our structured interview guide is omniscient or all encompassing.

A lot of data gets lost while transcribing qualitative data. Make sure to add the pauses, the stresses etc. They can change the meaning of the sentence totally and hence, also your insights.

One pitfall I often seen is people starting from scratch all the time even before coming up with focus group and interviews. Most of time, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. There is plenty of publicly available data before choosing the focus group. Another pitfall being creating some kind of echo chamber by choosing the wrong sample group. This leaves with a limited pigeonholed into few ideas

Probing Questions: In interviews and focus groups, you can ask probing questions to uncover hidden or unmet needs. Participants may reveal challenges or desires that they hadn't explicitly considered, offering valuable insights into potential gaps in the market. Open-Ended Discussions: Unlike surveys with predetermined questions, interviews and focus groups allow for open-ended discussions. This flexibility enables participants to express themselves freely, offering unexpected insights. Identification of Pain Points: Participants often share their pain points during interviews and focus groups. These can point to unmet needs that, when addressed, could significantly improve the customer experience and create market opportunities.

Internal cross-functional team workshops can help identify and focus areas to explore in qualitative research prior to conducting the interviews. In addition, validating insights coming out of qualitative research using a quantitative assessment tool is typically recommended. Although this partially depends on the business objective, risk level, and how the learnings will be applied.

Interviews and focus groups can be a handy tool to deliver good insights to inform strategic direction. At the same time, if done improperly they can be a waste of time. Questions to keep in mind: 1. Does the sample of participants represent the whole population? How many participants do you need and why? 2. Was the interview preparation and process structured? 3. Have you thought about the readout and ways to measure the answers (sentiment analysis, etc.)?

Don't ever ask a respondent--in a group or IDI--what they want. That's a sure-fire way to a me-too solution. Most customers are not all that creative (some are!) and you're likely to get stale bromides like "make it faster/cheaper/more reliable." Those answers say everything while saying nothing. It's not the customer's job to solve the problem; it's yours. Instead, ask customers to describe their experiences using products or services. What do they love? What drives them crazy? What is the impact when things don't work the way they should? And don't settle for generalities like "ease of use." If we're designing a new product or experience, we need *specific* information that can drive design decisions. Keep asking why until you get them.