Abstract
Ph.D. (Marketing Management)
The study was conducted for the purpose of providing a scientific research quality framework to provide guidelines and new knowledge for focus group research practice in South Africa. The need for a guiding focus group framework was borne out of the critical need for scientific and quality marketing information generated through focus group research. The growing need for quality focus group research information across industries in South Africa was evidently not met, due to the various challenges inherent within the local industry practice of focus group research. The various challenges impacting on the quality of focus group research were identified through an extensive literature investigation, and later confirmed through the empirical study which was preceded by an exploratory qualitative study. The major sources of research quality challenges identified and investigated for purposes of the study relate to non-systematic approaches to focus group research, malpractices and misuse of the focus group method leading to quality compromises. The unstreamlined approach to focus group research practice was found to be due to the different versions of the focus group process followed by many research practitioners, including their own self-guessed approaches. A further complication arises from lack of adherence to scientific procedures, either deliberately in the rush for profit or out of ignorance of research science with respect to the marketing research process. For these reasons, the quality of focus group research produced within the local marketing research industry may not me deemed scientific. Evidence abound, a desirable focus group research practice environment, guided through scientific application of the research method and conducive to the supply of quality focus group research needed to be created, in order to mitigate the quality challenges. The implications for questionable research quality were confirmed through the study to be dire for research user organisations across industries. Unsuspecting research users paid for and applied the defective research to inform their decision-making processes thereby risking failure in the face of market uncertainty.