Conducting Focus Groups for Business and Management Students

In Conducting Focus Groups, Caroline J. Oates and Panayiota J. Alevizou explain what is involved in conducting focus groups, outlining their main features, use in research, their design and the kind of rich, qualitative data they facilitate.

Ideal for Business and Management students reading for a Master’s degree, each book in the series may also serve as reference books for doctoral students and faculty members interested in the method.

Part of SAGE’s Mastering Business Research Methods, conceived and edited by Bill Lee, Mark N. K. Saunders and Vadake K. Narayanan and designed to support researchers by providing in-depth and practical guidance on using a chosen method of data collection or analysis.

Caroline J. Oates has been researching and teaching qualitative methods in the marketing field for many years. Her first publication on research methods was a chapter on the use of focus groups, in Research Training for Social Scientists, A Handbook for Postgraduate Researchers, published by Sage. Since then, her numerous publications in marketing have drawn upon a range of qualitative methods including focus groups with both adults and children. Caroline is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the Academy of Marketing, where she set up the Special Interest Group in Sustainability Marketing. Caroline was the founder of the Centre for Research in Marketing and Society, located in the University of Sheffield Management School, where she currently works as senior lecturer.

Panayiota J. Alevizou is a lecturer in marketing in the University of Sheffield and an experienced marketing practitioner. She has used focus groups as a main research method for most of her publications.  As a practitioner Panayiota organised and moderated focus groups for many years and in different European cities for consultancy projects. Panayiota leads an on-going project, utilising focus groups, which evaluates on-pack sustainability claims for companies. She is an affiliated member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a member of the Centre for Research in Marketing and Society based in the Management School.