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In addition, another major benefit of focus group is its ability to generate broad ideas fast and flexibly, which assists a researcher to obtain multidimensional responses from participants, some of which may beyond the researcher's expectation, with a rather short period and low costs (Threlfall, 1999). The advantages mentioned above particularly assist a marketing researcher to run a certain survey to assess attitudes and cognition towards specific products, service, etc. Furthermore, many marketing researchers exploit the focus group as an initial appraisal technique prior to extensive investigation due to the strength that explores new areas from the group interaction in quicker and cheaper manner, providing a direction for in-depth researches. .
For instance, in terms of constructing questionnaires, the lists of relevant questions can be developed from the focus group in the initial research phase to minimise the risk of addressing wrong issues (Cox, 1976). On the other hand, results collected from focus group could be beneficial in initial phase to validate the participants' perspectives on a given topic such as an evaluation of a product or business. Namely, with the method of focus group, the marketing researcher is able to capture dynamic, real-life interaction among participants when assessing participants' opinions and attitudes, thus uncovering the why behind the what in participant expression and getting to the core of the consumers' underlying beliefs (Threlfall, 1999).
Limitation of Focus Group.
However, none of data collection techniques is faultless and there is no exception for the focus group. The most obvious limitation of this method is that the researcher, or referred to the moderator, has less control over the procedure of producing data (Morgan, 1997).
