Talk is cheap: the myth of the focus group

Focus groups make us feel our views matter – but no one with power cares what we think. By Liza FeatherstoneIn the early 1950s, the Betty Crocker company had a problem: American housewives liked the idea of cake mix, but they weren’t actually buying it. And so the company approached Ernest Dichter, a Viennese psychologist who had pioneered a new kind of market research, and asked him to find out why.At the same time, the relatively new processed-food industry was determined to push r