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Market Research Services
Focus Groups / Group Discussions
We have been conducting market research focus groups for years. We help with 'all' parts of the process.
Throughout MRFGR's history, we have assisted in creating and managing hundreds of focus groups, at all different stages in their life cycle - whether managing a focus group from concept, recruiting participants only, or picking up the slack at the tail end of the project, and helping to boost respondent numbers where other companies have failed. This means that we are well-prepared to help with all of your focus group needs, wherever you need us.
Update: 01/05/2020 - Since the Covid-19 / Corona Crisis clients can now also conduct their focus groups remotely.
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Focus groups are one of the most popular methods of conducting market research - and for good reason.
They provide excellent insight into the perception and opinion of a specific target audience, all while giving participants the floor to divulge, discuss and elaborate on certain topics.
The Importance of Focus Groups
Our highly-experienced qualitative research team will work with you to craft the perfect recruitment screener - one that targets, labels, and identifies your desired participants with professional precision. There can be little room for misjudgement when it comes to the recruitment screener - it's arguably one of the most important elements in the market research process, as it ensures you'll be speaking to the right audience. We find recruitment screener design so important that we even include it in all of our recruitment packages as standard practice.
Gone are the scraps of paper with a rough outline sketched on both sides. We'll deliver a professional looking document that outlines your research goals, recruitment criteria, full screening questionnaire, and put every relevant bit of information into one place.
Note: a lot of our client's do approach us with readily-designed screeners - this is completely fine, and we'll incorporate your questionnaire into our project brief document (we will always, as a matter of procedure, cast our own expert eye over such submissions and advise if we feel there could be improvements).
All screeners require client approval before launch. Once approved, it will be programmed and coded onto our own system.
In addition to this, should you require a moderator, our moderation team will connect with you for a short consultation before drafting the discussion guide. We will outline your aims and goals and build a flexible yet robust approach that aims to get the best from your respondents.
Pre-planning & Strategy
Once the client has approved the respondent recruitment screener the 'internal' market research field recruitment team (to ensure the very best and genuine respondents we do not use external recruiters) begins the process of recruitment. Often, our first port of call includes contacting our vast database with a blind requirement (unlike most other agencies - and to ensure truthful responses - we will not 'lead' respondents by giving them details of the project requirement). Our registered respondents will then complete the online screener which will assess their suitability for the research. As standard policy, participants can only complete the recruitment screener once, they are not allowed to backspace or 'retry' after receiving a screen-out, and we do not openly discuss the exact criteria for any project, ever.
Recruitment screeners are made in a way that it's impossible for respondents to tell who we're really looking for. Duplicitous and 'professional respondents' can never be fully avoided - we'd be lying if we said otherwise - but our fully blind and tested system and protocols ensures a very limited instance of such individuals (less than 1%).
Where the database hasn't returned suitable respondents, or where we need a little more interest, we'll then turn to outreach as we have a foothold in many local community groups, local services, and social media campaigns - so we turn to these first, before making new, local connections if necessary.
All respondents are triple checked to confirm suitability. This is how we guarantee a good quality sample in all of our self-recruited focus groups. Respondents are blind screened, actively spoken to by a member of our team to verify that their details match (we often re-ask key questions again, checking their responses match), and in some cases where participants are classed as 'hard-to-reach', we will even request proof or check suitability.
Respondent Recruitment
MRFGR have an enormous resource of all types and size of focus group venues provided through our trusted venue partners both domestically and internationally. We will work with you and our partners to source a great value, perfect venue that can deliver on your full requirements, whether that be a purpose built focus group viewing facility with one-way mirrors, food, beverage and snacks for observers and respondents, video/audio recordings of the session, accessibility needs, live-streaming, and more or just a simple small community space (such as a village hall or similar).
Whatever you need from your venue, we'll help you find it. As venues aren't something we don't offer 'personally', we won't make any money on venue costs. You can rest assured that the price we quote you is the same as was given to us by the venue.
We'll also help you with any other additional services you require - from translation, to transcription, and incentive handling.
Venue Hire and Other Services
In addition to managing venue requirements, we will help with the day-to-day preparation and management of the focus groups, often including the little things that most people don't think about.
We'll organise catering for both observers and respondents, ensuring all dietary restrictions are adhered to, maps and directions are easily understood, manage the schedule of attendees to guarantee everyone gets there at the right time, and the venue is adequately set-up for your arrival.
We also handle all consent and conform and adhere to necessary GDPR guidelines as we appreciate that GDPR can affect each project - to a large degree - differently, but we will discuss with all of our client's at the commencement of a project what is required or optional. What's more, we'll help you meet those guidelines ourselves. This often involves us handling consent between participants and the clients, getting the signatures on the right bit of paper, ensuring the project runs according to local laws, and that all data is held and transferred securely, with adequate protection.
We also continue to manage respondents during this time. Just because they're recruited doesn't mean our job is over. We will touch base with them several times before their session (including the morning or afternoon of the research) to reconfirm their attendance which ensures our tried and tested way of assuring high attendance (having reached 95%+ attendance levels across the board for 15 plus years!).
Project Management
Moderation is the guiding light through all focus group settings. We have a team of highly trained and expert moderators who have experience in various sectors and industries, including those experienced with business decision makers, vulnerable adults, children, healthcare patients, or just general consumers.
All of our moderators provide a short briefing beforehand and a de-brief once the session has taken part.
Moderation
In almost all instances, the moderator assigned to your project will deliver bullet-points of the key-findings (included in the moderation package).
Further reporting and analysis services are available and delivered by our skilled qualitative team, all of whom have been writing market research reports and analysis for years. We offer Executive Summaries (3-8 pages) which highlight the key findings, or an in-depth report (8+ pages) which provides more detailed insight.
Example reports are available upon request.
Reporting and Analysis
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Get Started with Us Today
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Get Started with Us Today
If you would like a quote, information or advice in regard to a market research project brief - without any obligation - then please feel free to contact us either via the contact form, telephone or email.
Any calls will be answered by one of our professional researchers within the market research team (and they're all very experienced so can help you with any and all questions or queries you might have), and all contact form enquiries are responded to within 30 mins or less.
All UK based market research quotes are usually sent same-day. Quotes for international market research can take longer due to the amount of work involved.
We look forward to chatting with you!
Luke
Sky
"Hi Stephen Both groups went very well - a key client attended the first and was very pleased. Very articulate groups, really impressed especially considering it was such a difficult recruit (recruiting Somalis). The hotel was great too, incidentally, a nice place to do groups. Many thanks for your hard work on this - hope you feel it was worthwhile!"
Theo
e.on
"We have used MRFGR to recruit participants for multiple research projects with varied samples sizes and sometimes challenging recruitment criteria. They have a calm and professional manner, providing us with regular updates in the lead up to and on the day of research projects. Multiple touch points with participants approaching the study date ensures drop-out rates are extremely low with replacements usually being found very quickly if necessary. I look forward to working with MRFGR in the future."
Doug
Confidential Client
"MRFGR is the first external company we have used for sourcing focus group attendees. Although we have organised many groups previously I would definitely use MRFGR again. The costs were reasonable and the attendees we have received have been exactly the right target groups. The level of communication has been satisfactory too with regular updates leading up to each focus group. Matthew has managed all of the groups we have requested and there has been no issues. I would recommend trying MRFGR."
Murray
Nottingham University
"MRFGR recruited four focus groups for our research across a variety of settings, including socio- economically deprived urban communities and very small rural communities. Despite the significant challenges these settings posed MRFGR ensured that all our focus groups were fully attended, and with a minimum of fuss. I would have no hesitation in recommending them for recruitment work."
Sebastian
NHS
"When I phoned Matthew at MRFGR I was in a bit of a pickle. I needed to recruit 25 consultant paediatricians for telephone interviews (with minimal incentive) across 8 countries, two of which were non-English speaking. Oh, and I needed to have recruited and completed the interviews in 12 working days. Surprisingly, Matthew wasn't taken aback by this and set about the task with enthusiasm. Even against these challenging timescales, Matthew was able to deliver all 25 consultants - a phenomenal effort. I was extremely happy. And, more importantly, so was my client."
Richard
Vodafone
"MRFGR were not the cheapest firm who pitched for our work, but I am happy that I decided to go with them. I feel that their database is extensive and this combined with their excellent client service means that they offer a higher degree of reassurance and peace of mind than other recruitment agencies we have worked with in the past. When we had a problem to resolve at short notice they did this very quickly. I would happily work with them again."
Rachael
Countrywide
"The groups in Chipping Norton went really well thank you. We had a full turn out to both of them. I would just like to say that we have been very impressed with the number of participants you have managed to recruit to these groups, your regular updates on the recruitment progress, and your follow up contact. We have also had very positive feedback from the participants about their contact with you. We will definitely consider MRFGR in future when wishing to recruit participants to similar groups."
Amy
Febreze
"I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for the work that you recently carried out for us. Stephen Essex and MRGR were recommended to me by a colleague. It was important for us to find a company who could understand and deliver our brief on a very tight schedule. Stephen demonstrated a level of knowledge and professionalism that gave us the assurance that this would be achieved. The result was a report that clearly met the objectives of our brief, was presented in a professional manner, which then enabled us to present the findings to our customer with confidence. We would not hesitate to recommend or use Stephen again."
Susanne
Nescafe
"It's always a pleasure to work with MRFGR. They are a great partner who consistently recruit high calibre respondents to take part in our research projects and workshops. Always professional and very reliable."
Richard
Confidential Client
"I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for the work that you recently carried out for us. Stephen and MRGR were recommended to me by a colleague. It was important for us to find a company who could understand and deliver our brief on a very tight schedule. Stephen demonstrated a level of knowledge and professionalism that gave us the assurance that this would be achieved. The result was a report that clearly met the objectives of our brief, was presented in a professional manner, which then enabled us to present the findings to our customer with confidence. We would not hesitate to recommend or use Stephen again."
Richard
Solicitors Regulation Authority
"Our organisation, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, has used MRFGR to support our recruitment requirements for focus groups and public events and we have always found their service and achievements to be excellent. They have demonstrated a commitment to meet last-minute requirements in a calm and professional manner and we would not hesitate to recommend them."
125+ Reviews