Focus troupe: using drama to create common context for new product concept end-user evaluations

We offer a new technique for eliciting contextually relevant, personally experiential user feedback for products that do not yet exist. Too often customers and users are required to provide input on radically new product concepts with which, by definition, they have no direct experience. While traditional marketing techniques, e.g., focus groups and surveys, appear adequate for evaluating existing products with which customers have direct experience, these existing techniques offer only limited satisfaction for ev,aIuating new product concepts where there is no customer experience. Based on our experiences, we note that one primary reason for this limited utility is the variable use-contexts prevalent among the individual customers due to a product presentation format that cannot offer a common context, e.g., a foil set. Focus Troupe is a technique whereby dramatic vignettes are presented to an audience of potential customers in which the new product concept is featured merely as a prop or even as a dramatic element, but not as an existing piece of technology. The vignette casts familiar or common situations where the particulars differ based on the new invention, thereby contextually highlighting the new concept against a fruniliar <and common background. In our experience, the actual production of a Focus Troupe event is efficient and speedier than that of a more traditional focus group. The engaging presentation, the common background and no need for actud product concepts offers a unique methodology for eliciting relevant comments from otherwise njive customers about products that do not exist.