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09/04/2001 Archived Entry: "4-September-2001 -- Focus Groups in Asia: A Management Guide"

Focus Groups in Asia: A Management Guide -- "Focus Groups are a particularly useful method of data collection in Asia due to our strong oral tradition. Talking and discussing comes naturally.. ...whether it is in the coffee house or on the mobile phone. Asians are naturally social. As people who have visited Asia would know, due to many factors, the exchange of information by word of mouth is central to not only our cultures, but also the way business is done."

Replies: 5 comments

Hi Frank,

From the perspective of some cultures, especially North American, yes, several Asian ethnic and demographic groups are non-confrontational by nature. However, our moderators have no problems in engendering honest discussion suitable for market research and testing products/services in many markets and with many diverse groups.

Some techniques you may want to try.. Use a moderator as similar as possible to the target group. Warm up participants first by taking snacks first and letting them get to know the moderator.

There are other warming uyp techniques we use for example, but are more detailed to go into here.

Personally I feel the perception that people living in Asia are non-confrontational is a bit over done. Depends on the country, the ethnic group, gender, social class, etc etc.

1:1 is nice, but costs soar! Duos are good also, but we find the use of a professional moderator using the power of the discussion group and people feeling confident of confidentiality and "Exposing themseleves" is generally a credible option.

The key is, as I said before, selecting carefully your data collection methods, and modifiying them for each specific target group.

I hope I made my article "easier to believe" by these comments and that you may consider focus groups, along with other methods in usability testing in this very diverse region.

Rod

Posted by Rod @ 09/07/2001 10:17 AM EST

Hi, I'm the one who sent the links to John at webword on Rod's focus group article, the contextmag article and the Feer article.

After having done several usability tests here in Asia, we are rediscovering many of the things that brand and market research people have encountered years ago with Asian users and test subjects...Asians as subjects are a different cultural group and need contextual...my feeling is that in Asia that much of usability is still sociology than psychology.

Posted by frank @ 09/05/2001 10:46 PM EST

I do remember running across an article about focus groups in Asia... I find the new one hard to believe, as from personal experience, I find that asians are very non-confrontational. This attittude doesn't work well in focus groups, I would think. But these are from my experiences with the Chinese Community of Montreal... my experiences may have no scientific merit. Still, if I had the choice, I'd go 1:1 rather than focus groups when dealing with Asians.

Posted by Francis @ 09/04/2001 09:33 AM EST

Hi... I am the author of the article on focus groups.

"The she wants to watch you" article is excellent - observation is often the best research method for usability. However it is expensive in many cases and has advantages/disadvantages as does any technique.

A key skill in research is choosing the best technique for each research problem/question.

Experienced focus group moderators in Asia know how to turn a "discussion" into a "focus group" - if the rules of creating a culture where disagreement is allowed is engendered, as well as some other simple "rule setting", focus groups are just as effective in most Asian settings.

As I say in my article, using more care in composition of the groups (keeping diff classes, and genders separate) and other techniques is important in running effective focus groups in Asia.

So we are both right!

Posted by Rod @ 09/04/2001 07:34 AM EST

Didn't we just see a story on how focus groups *don't* work in Asia?

yup, here it is
She Wants to Watch You. Ethnography works better because Asian tradition and courtesy encourages agreement in groups, even if someone has a different view.

So who's right? Asia focus groups good or bad?

Posted by Jess @ 09/04/2001 04:26 AM EST

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