4. Convoking the Consumer in Person: The Focus Group Effect

Grandclément, Catherine; Gaglio, Gérald

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576746.003.0005

Cited by 33 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…This paper asserts that focus groups – particularly when they invoke humour and laughter – are a useful research strategy when exploring awkward, and socially taboo, research encounters around everyday practice and sustainable consumption. Like all ‘talk‐based’ research methods, focus groups clearly have their limitations such as the focus group itself being a type of performance (Grandclément and Gaglio ). However, they also have their strengths in that the focus group ‘performance’ also creates new types of data.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably absent from this increasing list of methods to explore everyday practices are focus groups. The human geography literatures on focus groups show how a methodological tool used extensively within market research and consumer sciences (Grandclément and Gaglio ; Holbrook and Jackson ) has been adapted to address the core interests of human geography, including issues of power and performativity embedded in research processes (e.g. Koch ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can people talk together about their practices? Focus groups, humour and the sensitive dynamics of everyday life

Browne

2015

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The exploration of everyday social practices related to sustainability often touches on the most invisible parts of people's everyday lives. Given the multiple cultural forces that govern cleanliness and comfort, and the intimate spheres in which these practices are performed, practices associated with everyday water use (and associated energy consumption) bump up against 'the taboo' . While it has been resolved that 'people can talk about their practices' in interviews, a range of other methods -including CCTV, video and other data to survey and document practices in homes -are increasingly being used. As we delve theoretically closer to these public/private boundaries with new studies on social practices and sustainability, greater attention to the ethics of methods is needed. Different 'talk'-based methodologies such as focus groups that could allow researchers to work more ethically with the strong moral sensitivities of certain domestic practices have not yet been considered. This paper explores six focus groups on 'bodies, clothes, dirt and cleanliness' that took place in Lancaster, UK. Reflecting on researcher positionality, and results of a follow-up survey with participants, the paper concludes that focus groups, humour and laughter enable intimately political conversations about aspects of everyday practices that might be difficult to access or articulate through other research methods. The implications of using conversational humour and laughter as purposeful tools for exploring particular aspects of everyday social practices is also explored. This paper responds to recent calls for greater consideration of fieldwork and methodologies related to gender and embodiment within human geography, and on the ethics and politics of everyday life research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can people talk together about their practices? Focus groups, humour and the sensitive dynamics of everyday life

Browne

2015

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“…Javier Lezaun and Linda Soneryd (2007) note that the surveying of public relies on a notion of the general public as separate, less opinionated than groups of "experts" and "interest groups." This is not unlike the removal of "atypical" participants in studies in market research noted by Grandclément and Gaglio (2011). To be suitable research subjects, participants are expected to possess certain features and lack others.…”

Section: Understanding Researching People To Describe Peoplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, I will draw on other instances of knowledge production (e.g. Lezaun and Soneryd 2007;Grandclément and Gaglio 2011;Sunderland and Denny 2011) that comprise cases of researching people to understand people (cf. Hacking 1999;Camic, Gross, and Lamont 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing consumers: market researchers’ selection and conception of focus group participants

Nilsson

2018

Consumption Markets & Culture

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This article inquires into how market researchers produce a relationship between subjects of study and objects of knowledge in consumer research. The relationship is explored through the routines that a group of market researchers use to select and exclude research subjects. Adding to studies of how market research and other marketing activities establish their objects of knowledge in terms of "performing" and "construction," the article draws attention to how recruitment shapes respondents: research participants are selected through principles beyond clients' recognition of "their customers," issues of representativity or resemblance to targeted groups. Selection practices are explored through notes from participant observation and interviews at the research firm studied, as well as the recruitment forms that are used to undertake selection. The assessed recruitment shows researcher concern over identifying respondents useful for producing descriptions of consumers and how common features of a targeted group may be excluded in this production.

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“…Following in the same vein, Lezaun (2007) and Grandclément and Gaglio (2011) describe the focus group as a socio-material device to manufacture 'naturalistic' consumer opinions and to connect them with marketing strategies. Lee (2010) documents how Merton, Fisk, and Kendall's (1956) focused interview method reached market research and was transformed into a group interview, before being imported back into mainstream social science as the focus group.…”

Section: Wrotementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Is there a gap in the market, and is there a market in the gap?’ How advertising planning performs markets

Jacobi

Freund

Araújo

2014

Journal of Marketing Management

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This paper explores the performative role of marketing knowledge in advertising planning. It is based on an ethnography within the account planning department of a London advertising agency as it worked closely with a client and a market research agency to develop a new energy/health drink for launch in the UK. The case provides detailed support for the idea that marketing (and other) theories help perform or bring into existence that which they purport to describe. It also shows how such theories are hybridised and streamlined in the iterative battleground of a creative process, framed by the need to create plausible consumption and competitive relations. The main contribution of this paper is to show how the performative power of marketing knowledge is ultimately determined not by its 'truth value', but by its ability to produce compelling stories that stabilize the reflexive relationships between product attributes, consumer profiles and competitive relations.

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4. Convoking the Consumer in Person: The Focus Group Effect

Cited by 33 publications

References 0 publications

Can people talk together about their practices? Focus groups, humour and the sensitive dynamics of everyday life

Can people talk together about their practices? Focus groups, humour and the sensitive dynamics of everyday life

Producing consumers: market researchers’ selection and conception of focus group participants

‘Is there a gap in the market, and is there a market in the gap?’ How advertising planning performs markets

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