Focus Group Assignment

Imagine you are working in People magazine’s marketing research department. You are in charge of all qualitative research for the department and are tasked with creating focus groups with these two marketing problems in mind:

1. How do advances in technology (Smart-phones, Tablets, Social Networking, etc) affect our customers reading of People magazine?

2. How does our customer differentiate People magazine (what do they think makes People magazine different) from its competitors?

These two marketing problems will be addressed in one focus group session. So in order to do this you will need to:

a. Identify what you think all criteria (ie. who, what, where, when, and how) that you would need to have in place for a focus group. You will be running 6 focus groups (they can be the same demographics or different). Please give your rationale for all of your choices. [About 1 ½ pages long]

b. Create an outline (script) of themes/questions you think need to be asked to find out the answers to your two marketing problems [About 1 pages long]

c. What potential information could be left out from using this data collection technique? [About ½ page long]

Your answers should be no longer than three typed single spaced, 12 point font pages long. You need to make sure you outline the focus group in enough detail that without any further guidance from you, I could perform the focus group.