The malicious focus group!

Focus groups are a great way for businesses to gain highly relevant market research - but what would happen if the focus group participants all banded together to deliberately give the business the wrong information about their product?

This is another short clip from The Onion, home of Tom White's recent post on the finance expert who saved the zoo by firing all of the employees.

While the clip itself is amusing, it can lead on to some good discussion about whether this situation could actually happen. My AS students have just finished a question on market research and many seem to think that the all market research results are completely unreliable because many people will simply lie. I will be showing them this video and looking at how confident a business can actually be that the market research is a fair representation of the target market - for example what factors would make it more or less reliable?

Malicious Focus Group Convinces Marketers Cinnamon Mountain Dew Is The Next Big Thing