Communications for Research (CFR) regularly partners with numerous focus group facilities across the US to facilitate research design projects on their behalf. These facilities operate as their own individual firms, with their own clients and own research recruiting practices. But like any business, they experience limitations in what they can accomplish, and how fast they can get things done.
When they run up against a roadblock or find themselves up against a large recruiting deadline, they often turn to CFR.
Why CFR for focus group facilities?
You may be surprised—focus group facilities turning to CFR to hit a deadline for research design? At a closer look, this makes sense. Most focus group facilities have their own panel of potential research respondents. This means that they enjoy the fruits of all of their research design efforts. Anyone they call, anyone whose information lands in their database is theirs to use and to target for future projects. But where focus group facilities run into challenges is when they take on projects that exceed their panel. For example, a focus group facility may have to perform research in many markets for one client, in markets where they don’t have a presence.
Enter CFR. CFR is not considered a direct competitor in this situation. We do not have our own facility and we do not have our own internal research panel data base. So in this sense, these group can turn to CFR as a partner in their research versus a competitor.
This is critical, since there are notable downsides for facilities to turn to a competitor for help. The first is obvious and, yes, it is a kick to pride: they must hire a competitor to get the job done. The second part of that is that the competitor is likely to charge enormous rates, far above what’s fair, to get the job done, simply because they know they can.
The benefits of partnering with CFR
CFR provides total custom recruitment solutions. What this means is that we partner with a focus group facility as a true partner, not a competitor. We have a presence throughout the US and any calls we make, and any data we collect, will be shared with the focus group facility. It is theirs. Because we don’t compete and because we do not have our own panels, we’re happy to share this information back to the focus group facilities. It is what they partner with us for, and it is what they pay for.
When we partner with a focus group facility, the engagement process typically looks like this:
- Discuss the project goals with the focus group facility
- Make sure we agree about what an ideal recruit would look like and agree on the overall research design
- Hit the ground running and recruit. This means we make calls and leverage our own methodologies to go above and beyond the recruiting expectations.
- Manage the entire process, up and through the day of research
- Hand over our findings and the data, including research and panel data
CFR delivers large focus groups for restaurant tastings, for just $75 / person
This process came into play recently when we partnered with an Atlanta research group on research they were performing for a national restaurant chain. This group needed focus groups in Kentucky and Tennessee, in addition to Atlanta, to participate in food tastings. They required large focus groups for these tastings and extensive recruiting power in a very short time frame. CFR was able to deliver all of their recruits and then some, for just $75 / recruit.
CFR empowers focus groups to accomplish their goals
CFR is skilled at using our training and refined internal processes for your use in research design. We do the outbound calling, we worry about the show rates and getting the right people in the room to participate. As a client of ours, focus group facilities can accomplish goals, meet deadlines and focus on their own clients.
Recruiting and research design is just one of the things CFR truly excels at. If you’re a focus group facility who has not previously considered partnering with a firm such as CFR, now is the time to give it some thought. We would be interested to hear about your latest projects and how we could be of help. You can contact us here.
