focus group

Why do we buy certain products or choose certain brands?This is the sort of question advertisers have always asked,and there are no easy answers.However, there is a handy tool that helps companies explore this and similar questions,and it's called the focus group.Until the 1940s, market research was often quantitative using things like sales figures and customer polls to track consumption.
But this changed during World War Sociologists Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld set out to learn how unprecedented exposure to wartime propaganda was affecting the public.