Behind-The-Mind Techniques in Focus Groups and Workshops

Focus groups challenge moderators that want to find out what participants are really thinking, not just pre-programmed rational responses. This technique from Marketing Mechanics uncovers subconscious feelings from participants in a non-threatening way.

What are participants really thinking?
When focus group participants are asked direct questions they generally give quick programmed answers, using the intellectual or rational side of their brains.

Therefore, what comes out of many traditional focus groups are rational responses that do not accurately reflect how participants really feel or behave. These responses are their justification for an opinion, reaction or purchase decision using the rational side of their brains.

Why do focus group participants provide pre-programmed rational responses? Do any of the following sound familiar? They:

• Want to appear smart.
• Do not want to express their true feelings because the other participants might think they are foolish or silly.
• Have an automatic response to certain questions.
• Do not want to disagree with anyone or say anything negative that might offend others.
• Are not in touch with their subconscious feelings so they cannot accurately communicate their true opinions.

In order to gain a competitive edge, companies need to identify and understand that the underlining motivation for a purchase decision or reaction to a concept lies at a deep subconscious emotional level. The ability to tap into this deep emotional level can provide a client with the insights that exert a strong influence on a consumer’s purchase behavior or reaction to a concept.

Proven Solution
One way to get passed pre-programmed or rational answers and tap into a participant’s deep emotional level is to use Marketing Mechanics’ Behind-The-Mind Techniques. These projective techniques elicit candid uncensored responses that reveal the participant’s inner most feelings and attitudes about a product, service, advertising, etc. and provide a client with action oriented results. Following are several examples of our Behind-the-Mind Techniques.

Behind-The-Mind Picture Sort
This technique:

• Distracts participants from giving rote answers because they are talking about a picture and not themselves, or so they think;
• Provides participants with a vehicle that opens the door to their subconscious feelings. This allows them to freely communicate their true inner most feelings and attitudes without inhibition or judgment.

How This Works
Around two dozen pictures (all pictures are numbered) are displayed on a wall showing a variety of different feelings and emotions. The participants are asked to select 3-4 pictures that best capture their reactions to the stimuli or issues being discussed. They write down the number of the pictures they selected along with the feelings and emotions captured in each picture. This allows them to project their true feelings through the pictures in a safe, disarming and non-threatening way.

Real Life Example
Two banks that were merging needed to find out about the quality of service they were providing their corporate customers during the merger process. They needed to obtain this information from the corporate relationship managers of the two merging banks. As in any merger, down sizing will occur, so how could you expect to get truthful, candid feedback from employees who might be concerned about being fired? If the relationship managers were asked to describe the quality of service they were currently providing corporate clients (direct question) they would not tell the truth.

In order to overcome this information roadblock, a Behind-the-Mind picture sort provided the relationship managers with a way to describe how they felt without them being aware of it. This allowed very insightful answers to emerge.

Specifically, the relationship managers were asked to select (from a wide variety of pictures) the pictures that best described the quality of service the banks were providing its corporate customers during the merger environment.

The relationship managers were asked:

• Which pictures did they select;
• A series of probing questions about why they selected those pictures.

Action Oriented Results
The results of this Behind-The-Mind projective exercise revealed that they were:

• Overburdened with work;
• Assigned too many clients to handle properly;
• Concerned that the ball might be dropped when handling certain situations;
• Concerned about other competing banks spreading rumors and trying to take business away from the bank;
• Not getting enough help; and,
• Not kept informed, on a timely basis, about what was happening from management.

These insights would not have been generated using a traditional direct questioning approach because the participants would be too concerned about keeping their jobs to give honest answers.

Conclusion
The Behind-the-Mind Focus Groups and Workshops are useful for a variety of qualitative research studies including:

• Concept development;
• Product development;
• Positioning;
• Problem solving;
• Satisfaction studies;
• Advertising evaluation;
• Idea generation;
• Evaluation of direct response packages.

If you are interested in finding out more about Behind-the-Mind Focus Groups and Workshops call Marketing Mechanics at 914-273-5007 or e-mail us at: [email protected].

This content was provided by Marketing Mechanics, Inc.