Why Focus Groups of One Are Stupid

I went to lunch with the entire GutCheck team yesterday.  Driving to the Cherry Cricket , which is my favorite burger joint in Denver, I noticed the Perky Jerky car in the picture below.  My immediate reaction was Really?  Do people really want energy boosting beef jerky?  Who the heck would buy such a product?  Instead of relying on my own product preferences to decide whether this was a good idea or not, I decided to GutCheck it.

I quickly interviewed a handful of people in Perky’s target market (18-40 year old males who are consumers of energy drinks) this morning on GutCheck to find out what they thought about energy boosting beef jerky.  It turns out, in less than 1 hour, I found out people think it is a good idea.  None of the respondents I chatted with had heard of Perky Jerky, but they liked the idea.  One person who only occasionally ate beef jerky would “eat this regularly for a morning snack or a 2:00pm pick me up”.  Another thought this would be a great replacement for energy bars as he thinks “they taste terrible”.  All the respondents were drawn to its healthy attributes, especially there being no MSG in the product.  And the best news for Perky Jerky is all of the respondents are interested in trying it.

As marketers, we are often left to rely on our focus group of one (ourselves) to make early-stage product decisions.  By speaking with just a handful of folks from our target market, we can quickly suss out whether we are going in the right direction.

What is your Perky Jerky story?

3 Responses

1. A Good Idea | GutCheck says:

   November 5, 2010 at 3:50 pm

   [...] idea as it make it’s way through a decision process. Whether it’s a brilliant idea to combine a road trip staple with caffeine into one snack or enter a new geographic region with a mismatched product and brand name- gaining [...]

   Reply
2. A Good Idea | says:

   September 14, 2010 at 3:45 pm

   [...] idea as it make it’s way through a decision process. Whether it’s a brilliant idea to combine a road trip staple with caffeine into one snack or enter a new geographic region with a mismatched product and brand name- gaining [...]

   Reply
3. George says:

   September 2, 2010 at 10:22 am

   Matt, Great example of the power of GutCheckit. That would have been impossible to do, in that short amount of time, with any traditional market research tools. Wow! Can’t wait to try it.

   Reply