IB Business Market Research Methods Reviewed

Why Companies Will Pay You £250 to Eat Crisps and Moan (And Other Research Methods)

Fancy earning up to £250 for sitting in a room for an hour, eating free food, and sharing your opinions about absolutely anything from trainers to OnlyFans?

It's called a focus group, and companies are absolutely desperate for people like you to tell them what you think. In 2024, the market research industry spent over $2.2 billion globally just on focus groups alone. That's billion with a B. And a huge chunk of that money goes straight into participants' pockets as "incentives" (fancy word for bribes).

Today we are covering the HOW of market research. Not just why companies do research (to avoid losing millions), but the actual techniques they use to spy on your shopping habits, decode your deepest desires, and occasionally trick you into revealing what you really think.

Some of these methods are brilliant. Some are properly creepy. And some involve AI that's got so good at pretending to be you that researchers at Stanford and Google DeepMind reckon they might not need actual humans anymore. (Don't worry, we'll get to that dystopian nightmare later.)

Let's start with the method that's been making Nike, Coca-Cola, and basically every major brand millions for decades...

Focus Groups: Getting Paid to Have Opinions

What Actually Happens in a Focus Group?

You and 5-9 other random people get called into a room. There's usually free pizza (or at least biscuits), a moderator asking questions, and a massive one-way mirror where company executives are definitely watching you like you're in some sort of bizarre reality show big brother style.

The moderator - who's been trained specifically for this - starts asking questions. Proper open-ended ones like:

• "What comes to mind when you see this packaging?"

• "How would this product make you feel?"

• "If this brand was a person, who would it be?"

(Yes, that last one's also real. Yes, it sounds ridiculous. Yes, companies pay thousands to ask it.)

Focus groups aren't about what you individually think. They're about the conversation. When someone says "I quite like the blue packaging," someone else might go "Nah, blue's dead, makes it look cheap," and suddenly everyone's debating colour theory whilst the researchers frantically scribble notes behind the mirror.

This sparking-off-each-other thing is called group dynamics, and it's why focus groups can reveal stuff that one-on-one interviews miss. People get confident, they challenge each other, they build on ideas. In reality you're creating marketing gold.

The Money Focus Groups Pay

In 2024, focus group pay rates:

• Standard consumer focus groups: £50-150 for an hour

• Specialised groups (like business professionals or medical experts): £100-250 per hour

• Some niche research (tech executives, specific demographics): up to £400

There are literally people who've made side hustles out of joining focus group databases. Sign up with places like User Interviews, Respondent, or Focus Group (yes, that's actually a website name), fill in your demographic info, and wait for the emails offering you cash to share opinions.

So what is the catch? You've got to actually show up and be honest. If you're just there for the free lunch and don't engage, you'll get blacklisted faster than you can say "I quite liked it, yeah."

IB Business Management Real-life Example: Focus Group Success - Nike and the £200 Trainers

Nike uses focus groups religiously. In 2019, before launching their summer sportswear line, they ran dozens of sessions testing designs, fabrics, and fits. One particular focus group in Manchester revealed that the original designs were "trying too hard to be trendy" and looked "like something your dad would wear to look young."

Nike's designers went back, toned down the loud patterns, improved the fit based on actual feedback about comfort, and relaunched. The line became one of their best-sellers that year. Those focus group participants - who probably got £100 each for their trouble - literally saved Nike from releasing a dad-core disaster.

Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke": Born in a Focus Group

Remember when Coke bottles had names on them? That started in Australia in 2011, but before the global rollout, Coca-Cola ran focus groups worldwide to test the concept.

In the UK focus groups specifically, they discovered something interesting: people weren't just excited about finding their own name - they were more excited about finding their mate's name and surprising them with it. That insight completely changed their marketing strategy. Instead of "buy a Coke with your name," it became "Share a Coke" - emphasising the gifting and social aspect.

Result? One of the most successful marketing campaigns in Coke's history. All because they asked people "what would you actually do with a personalised bottle?" in focus groups rather than just assuming.

IB Business Management Real-life Example: Focus Group Disasters

Sometimes focus groups are terrible at predicting what people will actually do.

Remember the Herman Miller Aeron chair? That weird-looking office chair that's now in basically every tech start-up? When they showed it to focus groups in the 1990s, people absolutely hated it. Called it "the chair of death" because it looked skeletal and weird. The focus group consensus was clear: nobody would buy this ugly thing.

Herman Miller went ahead and launched it anyway. It became one of the best-selling office chairs in history, worth billions.

What happened? Familiarity bias. People in focus groups often hate anything unfamiliar simply because it's different. Once the Aeron was in actual offices and people experienced how comfortable it was, opinions completely changed.

That's the fundamental problem with focus groups: people say one thing in a room full of strangers and do something completely different when they're actually shopping. It's why companies now combine focus groups with other research methods rather than relying on them alone.

The Future: AI Focus Groups That Never Complain

In December 2024, researchers at Stanford University and Google DeepMind published a paper showing they'd created AI replicas of real people that could answer questions in focus groups with 85% accuracy compared to the actual humans.

The process:

1. Have a two-hour interview with a real person

2. Feed that conversation into AI

3. The AI creates a "digital twin" that thinks and responds like that person

4. Now you can run unlimited focus groups with the AI version

No scheduling conflicts. No expensive incentives. No risk of people lying to look good. Just endless virtual focus groups whenever you want them.

Sounds too good to be true or brilliant, right? But also... disastrous. Companies could run focus groups with AI versions of you without you ever knowing. They've basically cloned your consumer personality.

The technology isn't perfect yet - it's only 85% accurate, which means it gets stuff wrong 15% of the time. But give it a few years and focus groups as we know them might be dead. Or at least, human focus groups might become a luxury that only massive companies can afford.

Surveys: Death By 1,000 Questions

If focus groups are intimate conversations, surveys are the opposite: mass data collection where your individual opinion barely matters because you're one of thousands.

You know those annoying "Please complete this 2-minute survey" pop-ups? That's primary research, and despite being incredibly irritating, they actually work.

How Surveys Work in 2024

The survey game has changed massively in the past few years:

Mobile-first everything: In 2024, 61% of all survey responses come from phones rather than computers. Companies learned that if you make surveys mobile-friendly and catch people during their lunch break scroll, they're way more likely to complete them.

Shorter and shorter: The average online survey in 2024 has just 11 questions (down from nearly 12 in 2019). Attention spans are dead, so researchers have adapted. More than half of surveys now have 5 or fewer questions per page.

Gamification is huge: To combat terrible response rates, companies are turning surveys into actual games. Progress bars, points, rewards for completing sections - basically anything to trick your brain into thinking it's fun rather than tedious.

AI-powered follow-ups: Some surveys now use AI to generate personalised follow-up questions based on your previous answers. It's like having a conversation with a survey, which is both impressive and slightly spooky.

Types of Surveys

Postal surveys: Still exist somehow. Companies mail you a questionnaire, you fill it in with a pen like it's 1995, and mail it back. Response rates are terrible (usually under 10%), but they're cheap to send out in bulk.

Personal surveys: Someone with a clipboard approaches you in the street/shopping centre and asks questions. You've definitely pretended to be on your phone to avoid them. Response rate depends entirely on how desperate people are to avoid eye contact.

Telephone surveys: Companies call you during dinner to ask about your broadband. You hang up. They mark you as "refused to participate." Everyone's unhappy.

Online surveys: The dominant method now. Pop-ups, email links, social media ads directing you to surveys. Response rates vary wildly but they're cheap and fast to deploy.

Self-completed surveys: Left on tables in hotels, restaurants, shops – those feedback cards you've never filled in. They exist more to make companies feel like they're "listening to customers" than to actually gather useful data.

The Problem: Selection Bias and Rushed Responses

Surveys have two massive problems:

1. Only certain people respond: Think about it - who actually completes surveys? People who are either really happy or really angry (mostly angry). Normal, satisfied customers don't bother. So your data skews toward extreme opinions.

2. People don't care: When's the last time you properly thought about a survey response? Most people click through as fast as possible just to get rid of it. That "How satisfied are you? 1-10" question? You probably picked 7 without thinking because it's vaguely positive but not committal.

This is called response bias, and it's why smart companies don't just send out surveys and call it a day. They combine survey data with other methods to verify their findings.

But Sometimes Surveys Work Brilliantly

Despite all the problems, surveys are still the most popular research method because when done well, they're fast and cheap compared to focus groups or interviews.

IB Business Management Real-life Example: When Spotify was developing their algorithm improvements in 2023, they ran constant micro-surveys asking users "Did you like this song recommendation?" after every few suggestions. Just a thumbs up/down, no essay required.

Millions of responses. Clear patterns emerged. Algorithm improved. Users got better recommendations. Everyone won.

The key? Make it so quick and painless that people respond without thinking about it. One click, done.

Interviews: When Companies Want Your Elaborated Opinion

Whilst surveys cast a wide net, interviews are about going deep with individual people. Think of them as focus groups but one-on-one, which changes the dynamic completely.

How Interviews Actually Work

Interviews can be:

Face-to-face: Traditional method where an interviewer sits down with you (coffee shop, their office, wherever) and has a proper conversation. Time-consuming and expensive, but you get rich (almost). You are required to give detailed responses.

Phone interviews: Cheaper than face-to-face but you lose all the body language cues. Good for quick checks or when people are geographically spread out.

Video interviews: Exploded during COVID, still popular in 2024. Combines benefits of face-to-face (can see reactions) with convenience of remote work. Zoom/Teams has made this dead easy.

The questions are usually open-ended: "Tell me about your experience with..." or "How did that make you feel?" - stuff that requires actual answers rather than yes/no.

The Advantage: Cultural and Linguistic Flexibility

Here's something surveys struggle with: cultural nuance.

If a survey question is confusing in English, tough luck - you're stuck with it. But in an interview, if you don't understand something, the interviewer can explain it differently. They can adjust their approach based on your cultural background, language level, or how you're responding.

This is massive for international companies doing research across different countries. An interviewer in Mumbai can adapt questions for a local context. A rigid survey could never achieve this.

The Disadvantage: Takes Forever and Costs Loads

The problem? Interviews are expensive and slow.

One focus group with 8 people takes 2 hours. Eight individual interviews? That's 16 hours minimum, plus scheduling nightmares, plus the fact that you're probably paying each person £50-100 for their time.

And then someone has to transcribe all those interviews, analyse the transcripts, find patterns... by the time you're done, weeks have passed and thousands of pounds have been spent.

This is why interviews are usually reserved for:

• High-value research where you really need deep insights

• Understanding complex motivations that surveys can't capture

• Pilot research before designing a larger survey

• Situations where the sample size is naturally small (like B2B research with specific executives)

Observations: When Companies Spy on You

Right, time for a frightening one. Observation research is when companies watch what you actually do rather than asking what you think you do.

Why? Because - people are terrible at accurately reporting their own behaviour.

How Observation Actually Works

In-store tracking: Ever wondered why supermarkets rearrange their layouts? They're watching you. Some shops use:

• Heat mapping technology that tracks where customers spend most time

• Cameras with AI that analyse which products people pick up and put back

• Footfall counters showing which aisles get most traffic

• Eye-tracking technology (in research settings) showing where your eyes look on shelves

In 2024, retailers are using AI-powered systems like YOLOv5 (yes, really - "You Only Look Once") that can track customer movements through entire stores in real-time. They know which aisles you walked down, which products you picked up, how long you looked at each shelf, and what you ultimately bought.

All without asking you a single question.

Online tracking: Even creepier is the digital world. Every click, hover, scroll, and pause on a website is tracked. Heat maps show where people look most on web pages. Session recordings literally record your screen as you browse (anonymised, supposedly).

Google Analytics alone tracks billions of user interactions daily. Every time you pause on a product page for 30 seconds, that data goes into a database. Multiply that by millions of users, and companies know exactly how people actually shop online versus what they claim in surveys.

Observation Advantages: Truth vs. Lies

Ask someone "Do you impulse-buy sweets at checkouts?" They'll probably say no. They genuinely think they don't.

But watch them in Tesco? Different story. Observation data shows people absolutely do impulse-buy, they just don't remember doing it or don't want to admit it.

This is why observation research is considered more objective than surveys or interviews. There's no interviewer bias (where people give answers they think sound good), no memory problems, no self-deception.

You're capturing what people actually do, not what they think they do or wish they did.

Observation Disadvantages: Expensive, Time-Consuming, and Ethically Dodgy

Analysing observation data is extremely labour-intensive. Someone (or increasingly, AI) has to watch hours of footage, track movements, identify patterns, and make sense of it all.

And there's the ethics problem. How much tracking is too much tracking? When does "market research" become "surveillance"? In 2024, with GDPR and increasing privacy concerns, companies have to be very careful about what they track and how they inform customers.

Retail stores now have signs saying "CCTV in operation for research purposes" but most shoppers don't realise this means their shopping patterns are being analysed by AI systems in real-time.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative: Numbers or Stories?

Right, time for the bit your teacher will definitely test you on: the difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

Quantitative research = Numbers, statistics, "how many?" Qualitative research = Opinions, feelings, "why?"

Quantitative Research: All About the Numbers

Quantitative research asks questions like:

• How many people prefer Product A over Product B?

• What percentage of customers would pay £50 for this?

• How satisfied are customers on a scale of 1-10?

It needs large sample sizes to be statistically valid. You can't ask 10 people and claim to understand the market - you need hundreds or thousands.

Methods include:

• Surveys with closed questions (Yes/No, rating scales, multiple choice)

• Statistical analysis of sales data

• Web analytics showing user behaviour patterns

• A/B testing (showing different groups different versions and measuring which performs better)

Advantages:

• Quick and easy to collect and analyse (especially with computers)

• Statistically valid - you can actually predict things with confidence

• Objective - numbers don't lie (well, they can be manipulated, but that's another issue)

• Easy to compare - you can track changes over time or compare different groups

Disadvantages:

• Doesn't explain "why" - you know 70% of people prefer blue packaging, but not why they prefer it

• Can miss nuance - complex human emotions don't fit neatly into numbers

• Limited by the questions asked - if you didn't include the right answer option, you'll never know

Qualitative Research: All About the Stories

Qualitative research asks:

• Why do customers prefer this brand?

• What emotions does this product evoke?

• How do people actually use this in their daily lives?

It's about depth over breadth - fewer people, but way more detail.

Methods include:

• Focus groups

• In-depth interviews

• Observations (the descriptive analysis, not just counting)

• Open-ended survey questions

• Ethnographic research (basically anthropology applied to consumer behaviour)

Advantages:

• Rich, detailed insights - you understand the why behind behaviour

• Flexibility - you can follow interesting tangents and unexpected discoveries

• Reveals motivations - uncovers emotional drivers that numbers can't capture

• Better for complex topics - some things can't be reduced to numbers

Disadvantages:

• Not statistically valid - you can't generalise from 20 focus group participants to the entire market

• Time-consuming - interviews take hours, analysis takes weeks

• Subjective - researcher interpretation matters, different analysts might reach different conclusions

• Can't predict - you can understand deeply but not necessarily forecast trends

IB Business Management Real-life Examples: How Companies Use Both

Apple is famous for combining both:

• Quantitative: Massive data analysis of how people use their devices (billions of data points from iOS analytics)

• Qualitative: In-depth interviews and observations to understand why people use features certain ways and what frustrates them

Google does the same:

• Quantitative: Analysing search behaviour across billions of users to optimise their algorithm

• Qualitative: User testing where they watch individuals navigate products and ask about their thought process

The smart approach? Use quantitative to identify what's happening, then qualitative to understand why it's happening.

Example: Your sales data (quantitative) shows 40% of customers abandon their shopping cart at checkout. That's a problem, but you don't know why. So you run interviews and usability tests (qualitative) and discover your checkout process is confusing and people don't trust it with their card details. Now you know what to fix.

Secondary Research Methods: When Someone Else Already Did the Work For You

We've focused mainly on primary research (collecting new data), but remember secondary research? That's using existing data sources, and there are loads of them:

Market Analyses: The Expensive Shortcuts

Companies like Gartner, Nielsen, Mintel, and Statista make billions selling market research reports. These are massive documents (sometimes hundreds of pages) analysing entire industries.

Example: Want to know about the UK energy drink market? Mintel probably has a £4,000 report covering:

• Market size and growth

• Key players and market share

• Consumer demographics and preferences

• Trends and forecasts for the next 5 years

For a start-up that can't afford £50,000 in primary research, buying one of these reports is a steal. For a major corporation, it's pocket change to get professional insights.

Academic Journals: Free (If You Know Where to Look)

University researchers publish thousands of studies on consumer behaviour, market trends, and business strategies. They're peer-reviewed (meaning other experts checked them), so they're generally reliable.

Possible issues: They're written in academic language that makes you want to cry (if you are not an academic yourself). And finding the right journal for your topic takes skill.

But Google Scholar is free, and many journals now have open-access articles. If you're doing research for a business plan, academic journals can provide solid evidence to back up your claims.

Government Publications: Boring But Useful

Governments publish massive amounts of free data:

• Office for National Statistics (UK): Population data, employment figures, consumer spending patterns

• Eurostat (EU): Economic indicators across Europe

• Census data: Detailed demographic breakdowns

• Trade reports: Import/export data, industry trends

It's incredibly dry reading, but it's authoritative and free. If you need to know "how many 18-24 year olds live in London?" - the government's got you covered.

Media Articles: Quick But Be Careful

Business magazines (The Economist, Forbes), newspapers (Financial Times, The Guardian business section), and trade publications provide up-to-date market news.

They're quick to read and often highlight emerging trends before academic journals catch up. But they can be biased - check who funded the research and what agenda they might have.

Online Content: Everything and Nothing

The internet has everything. Company websites, blogs, social media analytics, YouTube videos, TikTok trends... it's all potential research material.

The problem? Most of it's unreliable and I am being diplomatic here. Anyone can publish anything online. No peer review, no fact-checking, no guarantee of accuracy.

So if you're using online content for research, you need to be critical and you need to be knowledgeable. Is this a credible source? Do they cite their data? Is this sponsored content disguised as information? Are multiple reliable sources saying the same thing?

Combining It All: The Clever Approach

The best companies don't rely on just one method. They combine them strategically:

Stage 1 - Broad Understanding (Quantitative + Secondary)

• Check existing market reports and government data

• Run large-scale surveys to identify general patterns

• Analyse web analytics and sales data

Stage 2 - Deep Dive (Qualitative)

• Focus groups to understand the "why" behind patterns

• Interviews with specific customer segments

• Observations to see actual behaviour

Stage 3 - Validation (Quantitative)

• More surveys to test insights from qualitative research

• A/B testing to see which approach works better

• Statistical analysis to predict outcomes

IB Business Management Real-life Example: McDonald's doesn't just guess what people want. They:

1. Analyse sales data to see what's popular (quantitative)

2. Run focus groups to test new product concepts (qualitative)

3. Survey thousands of customers about preferences (quantitative)

4. Observe how people eat and interact with products (qualitative)

5. Test market new items in select locations (quantitative validation)

Only after all that do they roll out a new menu item nationwide. That's why McDonald's product launches usually succeed - they've done the research properly.

IB Business Management Exam Corner

When you're writing about this in exams, remember:

Know your definitions: Qualitative = opinions/motivations/non-numerical. Quantitative = numbers/statistics/measurable. Don't mix them up.

Understand advantages AND disadvantages: Every method has trade-offs. Focus groups give rich insights but can't predict behaviour. Surveys reach thousands but miss nuance.

Use real examples: Mentioning Nike's focus groups or retail observation technology makes your answers way more interesting than generic theory.

Think about context: What's appropriate depends on the business situation. A start-up can't afford expensive focus groups. A multinational corporation launching a £100 million product would be insane to rely on just surveys.

Connect to other topics: Research methods link to marketing strategy, new product development, market segmentation, decision-making... show you see and are aware of the bigger picture.

Application is everything: IB Business Management loves case studies. If they give you a scenario, apply specific methods to that situation and explain why they're appropriate.

IB Business Management Gold

Market research methods range from simple (asking people questions) to sophisticated (AI systems tracking every eye movement in stores). Companies spend billions on this because getting it right means launching products you actually want, at prices you'll pay, and marketed in ways that resonate with you.

And getting it wrong means spectacular, expensive failures.

The next time you're annoyed by a survey pop-up, remember: you're participating in a multi-billion dollar industry that shapes which products exist, how they're designed, and what companies think you want.

Stay well,