Interviews and focus groups explore how people understand an issue, describe an experience and make trade-offs. Numerical data may show how often a pattern occurs while leaving its language, reasoning and context unexplained. Marketways selects participants and questions around a clear research purpose, then distinguishes recurring evidence from an interesting individual comment. The findings can improve a proposition or shape sharper hypotheses for quantitative testing.
The decision this method supports
We use Interviews & Focus Groups to help clients answer: What do participants understand, experience or believe, and why?
How the method works
Interviews explore an individual's experience and reasoning, while focus groups examine discussion and differences within a carefully selected group. Both methods are suited to exploratory questions, language, context and interpretation. They do not estimate how common a view is in the wider population.
A business example
Before designing a survey, a company may use interviews to learn how customers describe a problem and focus groups to test how different groups respond to proposed concepts. The findings can improve the later questionnaire and quantitative hypotheses.
How the client uses the result
Interviews and focus groups help a business understand the language, reasoning and context behind behaviour. They are useful for discovering issues, developing propositions and improving the questions that later quantitative research should test.
What we deliver
We produce structured responses, coded qualitative evidence, observation records or a secondary-evidence base. The result include the population, collection conditions and limits needed for responsible interpretation.
Limits and complementary methods
Qualitative research provides depth and explanation, not population prevalence. A recurring view in a group should not be reported as a market percentage.
Selected methods and techniques
We select from these established methods according to the decision, evidence and operating conditions.
- Behavioural-event interviewing: Conduct structured interviews in which a person describes specific past situations in detail: what happened, what they did, why and with what result. Code the accounts against defined capability criteria. It gathers evidence of demonstrated behaviour rather than hypothetical answers or self-description.
- Co-design workshops: Facilitate sessions in which the people affected by a change work with designers and decision-makers to shape the change and its implementation. They draw on participants' knowledge of how work actually happens. Co-design improves fit and ownership; it does not replace testing whether the design works.
- Customer interviews: Conduct structured or semi-structured conversations with people selected because they make, influence or experience the customer decision. Use a stated recruitment logic and guide to examine recent behaviour, needs, alternatives, quantities, prices, barriers and conditions for switching; retain notes or recordings and compare recurring patterns with contradictory cases. Interviews can explain why choices occur and improve later survey or modelling questions. A small or purposive interview sample does not estimate how common a view is, and stated willingness to buy is not a completed purchase.
- Customer interviews and ethnographic / contextual inquiry: Interview people about their goals, choices and difficulties, and observe activity in the setting where the work or decision occurs. Use a stated sampling logic, interview guide, field notes and comparison of reported behaviour with observed practice to identify unmet needs, constraints and workarounds. Interviews provide accounts and contextual inquiry provides direct observation; combining them can reveal differences between what people say and do. The method explains possible mechanisms and needs, but a qualitative sample does not establish population prevalence or realised demand.
- Delphi technique: Elicit expert judgements independently over several structured rounds. After each round, return an anonymised summary of estimates and reasons so participants can revise their views, then report the distribution, convergence, persistent disagreement and stated uncertainty. Delphi reduces direct social pressure and makes changes in judgement visible. Agreement among experts is still judgement rather than observed fact, and shared sources or assumptions can create apparent consensus without independent support.
- Depth interviews: Use extended one-to-one interviews to understand how people experienced a situation, the sequence of events, meanings, motivations, trade-offs and explanations they attach to it. Define the research question and purposive recruitment criteria; use a topic guide with neutral probes; preserve participants' own language; document notes or recordings, coding and contradictory cases; and protect confidential information. Depth interviews can reveal mechanisms and questions that structured measures miss, especially for sensitive or complex experiences. Because participants are deliberately selected and answers are interpreted, interview counts do not estimate population prevalence, market size or the effect of an intervention.
- Distributor / channel interviews: Interview distributors, agents, retailers, sales partners or other channel participants about how a defined offer could reach customers. Select participants by relevant role and coverage; examine customer access, category experience, incentives, margins, credit, inventory, logistics, service obligations, data access, conflicts and required commitments; and verify important claims against documents or other evidence. Channel participants provide specialist and interested accounts rather than neutral market facts. Their enthusiasm does not prove buyer demand, exclusivity or partnership, and several interviewees drawing on the same market source are not independent confirmation.
- Expert / stakeholder interviews: Interview people with specialist knowledge or a material interest in the proposal to identify requirements, constraints, incentives, evidence and rival interpretations. Select interviewees by role, ask what supports their view and what would change it, record possible interests and shared source lineage, and preserve disagreement. Experts may explain technical or regulatory mechanisms, while stakeholders may reveal needs and implementation consequences. Their accounts are not automatically independent evidence, representative demand or approval from the wider population.
- Expert interviews: Elicit specialist knowledge from people selected for relevant experience, asking for evidence, assumptions, ranges, counterevidence and conditions under which their judgement would change. Record each interviewee's domain, possible interests and source lineage, and preserve disagreement instead of averaging it away. Expert interviews can explain mechanisms and fill early knowledge gaps. They do not provide representative customer demand, and repeated opinions based on the same source are not independent corroboration.
- Focus groups: Use moderated discussion among deliberately recruited participants to explore shared language, interpretations, reactions, disagreements and the social reasoning around a defined question or stimulus. State the recruitment criteria, group composition, guide and materials; record the discussion; and analyse patterns and counterexamples across groups. Interaction can reveal views that individual interviews may miss. Dominant participants, conformity and the group setting can also shape responses. Focus groups generate and refine explanations or questions; their participant counts do not estimate population prevalence, demand or market share.
- Jobs-to-be-Done style interviewing: Use the Jobs-to-be-Done approach to reconstruct a recent choice, switch or workaround from the person's point of view. Ask about the situation and trigger, the progress sought, alternatives considered, anxieties, habits, trade-offs and the outcome after choosing. The method supplies evidence for a Jobs-to-be-Done analysis; the framework defines the lens, while interviewing is the data-collection procedure. Interview accounts generate and refine hypotheses, but they do not show how prevalent a job is or how much a market will buy.
- Online communities / qualitative diaries: Two qualitative approaches for gathering contextual evidence outside a single interview. An online research community uses moderated interaction among participants, often over several sessions; a diary asks individuals to record events and reflections close to when they occur. Both can explain experience and change, but neither estimates population prevalence without a separate representative design.
Parent method family
Research & Evidence Collection explains how this method connects to adjacent methods and relevant services.
Related service families
These service families contain business questions supported by this method. Service pages link to the wider method family so readers can understand the complete analytical approach.