I haven't read the new biography on Steve Jobs, but it's pretty hard not to read about it with all the coverage it's been getting these lest several weeks. Say what you want about the guy, he understood his audience. Many excerpts from the book have been rehashed already but two in particular stand out to me. First, the quote "people don't know what they want until you show it to them," and the fact that he didn't believe in focus groups.
I haven't read enough to know why he felt that way, but I certainly agree with him. Marketing is really just trying to figure out what people like to buy, and then carving your product to fit that mold. To put it another way, it's the art of understanding and predicting consumer behavior. Which is exactly the problem I have with focus groups, no one in that group is a consumer. At least they aren't at the time that the focus group is being conducted.
As Dan Ariely frequently points out in his books and on his blog, people often behave irrationally. Consumers often make decisions based on emotion rather than reason. To put a psychology spin on it, I would say their decisions are more motivated by their subconsciousness that their consciousness. A focus group fails to emulate consumer behavior because it takes people out of the consumer mind frame by speaking to their consciousness. Their answers are honest, but they are the product of rational thought and not a true reflection of consumer behavior. It's like playing poker with fake money: the game looks exactly the same from the exterior but there is no element of risk. The players will behave more recklessly because they have no real money of their own to lose or win. (It's also incredibly boring. Look, I'm no advocate of gambling but try playing poker with no money and see how long you can last before you're suggesting Fish as a superior alternative.)
A poor marketing professional will make decisions based on what their audience says. A smart marketing professional will make decisions based on what their audience does.
