About

"What It Costs"

Well, it depends. As a matter of course, we will bid projects on a proposal basis. In the proposal stage of a project, we need to come up with some form of a working budget, and you need to understand how a firm like ours comes up with its fees.

First, consider only the costs of the facility and the recruiting - not the moderators' services. On average, the facility reservation might run about $850 per group. This includes a focus group suite, hostess, audio tapes and refreshments. Recruiting services for an easy to recruit group, which is the norm, average $500 to $700. When your unique situation requires us to recruit harder to find individuals, like people who have been to Auckland, New Zealand in the last six months, the price can go up. Also, if we bid the facility and recruitment together, we often get a break on these prices.

Now we'll look at the respondents' incentive.
Few consumers out there are willing to give up two or more hours to come in and discuss the finer points of a product or service without an inducement. The incentive for a 90-minute focus group starts at about $45 per respondent and can go as high as $250 per respondent - again, depending on who you need in your group. For instance, doctors, attorneys and top executives value their time more highly and won't respond to a low number. Also, if we're looking for the needles in the haystack, we want to make certain that when we do find them, they say yes. Ultimately we use our experience and intuition to set an appropriate incentive.

Finally, let's look at the services provided by the moderator.
The moderator will work closely with the client to develop the focus group discussion guide, write an appropriate screener from which to recruit the best possible candidates, coordinate all services provided by the focus group facility and, of course, moderate the group. Depending on the complexity of the job, you might expect to pay between $1,350 and $2,300 for these services.

So here's a summary, in tabular form, of your focus group costs:

That's it. For $3,240 you can have a single focus group of easy to find respondents, professionally moderated and tailored to your specific marketing needs and budget requirements. Then, if you choose to have a report prepared on the back end, those additional costs will be determined by the extent of reporting you desire.

Keep in mind also that when multiple groups are conducted, pricing per group for most all services will go down.