The Elite Respondent: Why Going to Focus Groups Is Good for You

Ten or so IT professionals file into a conference room. One wall of the room is a two-way mirror. A discussion takes place about server software, or email security, or any of the myriad topics that eat up your workday. Except this is not actually part of your workday.

This is a market research focus group: a meeting of carefully selected individuals, called respondents, paid to discuss or possibly test a specific product or service for the benefit of a company that wants to market said product or service. In this case, highly trained and experienced individuals are paid to address highly specialized products and services in information technology.

Some of you have done these studies. Some consider them a waste of your admittedly valuable time and send notices of such events straight to spam purgatory. But you might want to reconsider that. According to some of the country’s top IT professionals, there’s more to gain than you might think.

As an IT professional or executive, you are part of a limited, elite pool of respondents, in high demand among tech companies performing market research, and they really, really want to hear what you have to say. The product or service may barely even exist yet, but the invisible people behind that mirror are hanging on your every word: they want to know your opinions about what it should do, what it shouldn’t do, how it should look, feel, taste, and run. They want to know why you might decide to use it, or why you’re not using it, or what else you’re using. They are seriously interested. But why should you be?

Well, first there’s the money. High-tech studies pay respondents between $100-300, depending on the nature of the study and the time commitment involved. $200 or more is common for a two-hour focus group of higher-level respondents. Online meetings or telephone interviews are often shorter and more convenient for the respondent, so they might pay $150 or so.

We can all use a few extra bucks for the next family outing (movie + parking + popcorn + pizza + ice cream X family of 5 = ridiculous), or a nice pair of shoes, or a small dent in that credit-card debt. So when someone is willing to pay you $200 just to talk about stuff you talk about anyway, it’s not a bad deal.

But for most of the people in this hypothetical room, there is more to it than the money. Humphrey (any reputable market research company guarantees its respondents that none of their information will be shared in any way, and all names have been changed in keeping with this principle), IT director for a major national retailer (company names are not specified, but you would recognize many of them), states outright, “I'm in it for the money.” But then he goes on to elaborate: “I like it because it can sometimes show me different products or strategic directions,” he adds. “It’s also good to see what challenges other companies are facing.”

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