Customer Reviews

Beyond Listening: Learning the Secret Language of Focus Groups

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This book is a great collection of insights and case studies of how other companies have utilized qualitative research methods to uncover key learnings and how they have both successfully and unsuccessfully implemented ideas for the consumer. A terrific read for all marketers.

Too many Market Research books tend to be dry tomes, focusing on quantitative methods but written in a fairly theoretical style: they talk about why research is useful, and how surveys are conducted. Ho hum.

But here is a Market Research book that feels real. Bonnie Goebert is a senior researcher who has run countless groups and experienced the hard crunch of difficult respondents and the challenge of digging into topics that others find difficult to articulate. She knows the score: and knows that the mission is bring back to the client a living, breathing understanding of what motivates their customers and what will drive success.

Bonnie has an ethnusiastic, grab-your-lapels style of writing and sharing her insights and experience, and this is what gives the book a very real credibility. She comes over as the senior guru everyone wishes they could learn from.

If there's a main theme here, it is her passion for going beyond description ("respondents said this...") and nailing the insightful idea that follows. As she says: the zip-loc bag didn't get invented because consumers wanted a zip-loc bag. It got invented because somebody listened to consumers discuss the mundane daily battle to wrap Johnny's sandwiches and store yesterday's left-over meatloaf.

In this sense the book is a zesty hybrid between a how-to guide on running groups and an example-laden treatise on how big ideas come from little insights. Bonnie goes beyond simple listening, and she encourages us to do the same. A great read for researchers, ad agency strategists and marketers alike.

Two other books on focus groups you might like to follow up: The very original guidebook: Focused Interview and a lightweight introduction for qualitative newbies: Moderating to the Max: A Full-Tilt Guide to Creative Insightful Focus Groups and Depth Interviews

I loved this book and I wish all those high flying ad agency people would read it. What are the thoughts that float through a homemaker's mind as he pushes his cart through the supermarket? You know what yours are, but do you know what his are? Bonnie Goebert says listen, ask the right questions. Don't try to con, talk down to or objectify the consumer because the consumer is us. This is the perfect book for account executives, art directors, copywriters, market researchers and anyone who's ever wondered how people make the decisions they do when they go to buy a product, any product. It's full of interesting anecdotes about human behavior, insightful observations and common sense conclusions that could help any company looking to jump start their business. It's lively, well written, and as the culmination of thirty years of focus group moderating, impecably researched. If more ad agencies and CEO's read this book, they'd find out who we really are...and what we really want. Wouldn't that be nice?

Warm, well written, insider's book based on thirty years of focus group research. Written with a voice that listens. Bonnie Goebert obviously likes people and likes listening. Her insights into customer motivation would help anyone who wants to sell anything to anybody, especially corporate types who sometimes forget that the consumer is us.