• NY Times, Tuesday, January 3, 2006 12:07 PM

Here's a question for marketers: In the course of researching your market, if you had the choice of learning what consumers actually do rather than what they say, which would you choose? No doubt most advertisers would pick the latter, since it more accurately reflects actual consumer habits. And since new technology, particularly on the Internet, allows marketers to closely track consumer behavior, such techniques have led to the demise of one of the most traditional market research tools in the business: the focus group. "Focus groups confirm what you already know," said Eva Steensig, a sociologist at DDB Denmark, where a new, Internet-based research tool dubbed SignBank was developed. "Talking about toilet paper for two hours in a room doesn't really help." The problem, Steensig said, is that most consumers are not experts on their own consumption patterns. They have other things to worry about, so in focus groups they are easily led and rarely come up with the kinds of original insights that a marketer needs to stay ahead.

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