I’ve been working on several projects involving focus groups which is one of my favorite aspects of marketing: asking customers about their preferences, thoughts, behaviors, motivations and so on. We do thorough screens of each participant and in depth one-on-one research so I get to know people by shadowing them and listening as they talk candidly as if we’re long time friends. It’s nice when a client has a budget for this type of research.

I’ve been working on several projects involving focus groups which is one of my favorite aspects of marketing: asking customers about their preferences, thoughts, behaviors, motivations and so on. We do thorough screens of each participant and in depth one-on-one research so I get to know people by shadowing them and listening as they talk candidly as if we’re long time friends. It’s nice when a client has a budget for this type of research.

Pete BlackShaw wrote an article published today in AdAge, “Why You Shouldn’t Forsake the Focus Group.” Similarly Pete said, “In an age of almost unstoppable “conversation,” this was a real conversation. Deep, authentic, unscripted, meaningful, unpredictable and even — dare I say — a bit disruptive. It felt good. It felt right.” Among other points, his article compares the noise of social media where marketers hear all kinds of feedback at a furious pace with traditional research methods emphasizing the balance of asking and listening.

But then I think, how do we as marketers make the most of both methods (and others) and which is the more reliable predicator of consumption? In the last 24 hours, I’ve watched someone in a large truck/SUV drive across a grass median in a church parking lot so as to not back into a parking space. There was plenty of time and space to drive around the lot, which was 80% empty. I next watched a man and women come out of the grocery store with a full shopping cart which they left in the middle of the street while loading the car when the grocery store had an off street parking lot. We had to go into oncoming traffic to on a street with traffic lights. Then I watched a car turn left (south) into one way, oncoming traffic in a construction zone in the pitch dark night so they could exit as if the were coming north because they obviously exited wrong.

If I asked these drivers if they would perform such actions and under what conditions, I’d be willing to bet they would be shocked by my suggestion that someone would behave this way so when we conduct research using focus groups or social media are we really creating circumstances that tell us what we think we need to know to be better marketers? I suggest that people today, especially under current economic stress and unhappiness, would do just about anything that’s easy, cheap and requires no thought (thoughtless comes to mind). I myself have been performing more u-turns to avoid traffic lights because it’s convenient. So is there more to the buying decision than what we already know and what we can get away with, even with someone watching? Yes but it takes time, money and patience to find those answers.