Two agencies quote for the same piece of qualitative research. Four focus groups here, four focus groups there. On paper the proposals are identical: the same groups, the same consumers, the same debrief at the end. One comes in a couple of thousand pounds cheaper, so it wins.
Emma Wood, Group Commercial Director at FIS Group, has watched that decision play out many times, and her view is simple. The two proposals were never the same. They only looked it, because the thing that decides what the work is worth is the one thing the spreadsheet cannot show you: who is running it.
The like-for-like trap
When you compare qualitative quotes line by line, you compare the things that are easy to count. Number of groups. Number of consumers. Length of sessions. A debrief at the end. Every agency can tick those boxes, which is exactly why they tell you almost nothing.
Anyone can run a focus group. Anyone can type up the notes afterwards. The groups are not the product; they are the raw material. What you are actually buying is the calibre of the person in the room, and the quality of the thinking that happens after everyone has gone home.
“Anyone can run a focus group. What you are paying for is the person in the room, and the thinking that happens once everyone has gone home.”
Emma Wood, Group Commercial Director
What the right person actually does
A skilled moderator does not just collect opinions. They notice what consumers do not say directly, they push past politeness, and they follow the unexpected thread. Then an experienced analyst connects what was heard to the way the category actually behaves.
So instead of “people liked it, a bit sweet”, you learn that your product is mostly eaten at a desk, mid-afternoon, as a pick-me-up, and that in that moment consumers are not counting calories at all. They want the lift, or they want the indulgence. Which means the lighter recipe you were about to invest in is solving a problem your consumers do not have, and the real barrier to repeat purchase is sitting somewhere else entirely.
That is the difference the right person makes. Same four groups, same consumers. One report describes your product. The other changes your decision.
What happens without them
Without that person, you still get a report. You still get a debrief. It will tell you that most consumers liked your product, that a few found it sweet, and that overall the response was positive. It will be tidy, it will be on time, and you will not be able to do a single thing with it.
Increasingly, that kind of report is a transcript fed through an AI tool. The summary reads well. But nobody experienced has sat with what consumers actually said, weighed it against how the category behaves, and asked the only question that matters: so what? And because it reads well, it travels. The deck goes round the business, the headline sticks, and months later a decision is being defended on the back of a summary nobody ever interrogated. The problem is rarely that the report is wrong. It is that no one tested whether it was right.
The right person is not always the most expensive
None of this means the dearest quote is always the right one, or that every project needs the most senior name in the building. It does not. Sometimes a leaner piece of work is exactly right for the decision in front of you, and sometimes a smaller team is the better fit.
The point is narrower, and it is about matching. The right person is the one with the right experience for your challenge, put on your project because they fit it, not because they happened to be free that week. That is how FIS Group runs its work: the right team on each project, built around the decision you are trying to make. When two quotes look identical, price is the thing you can see and the calibre of the people is the thing you cannot, so price wins by default.
“The right person is not the most expensive one. It is the one with the right experience for your challenge, on your project because they fit it.”
Emma Wood, Group Commercial Director
Now do the maths
Say the work costs around £10,000 with one agency and around £12,000 with a specialist team. Choosing on price feels like saving £2,000. But if the report cannot support a decision, you have not saved £2,000. You have spent £10,000 on something you cannot use, and then either commissioned it again properly, or made a launch decision worth hundreds of thousands of pounds on findings that amount to “they quite liked it”.
Buy cheap, buy twice. In research, the second purchase is the small cost. The expensive part is what you did in between, while you trusted the wrong answer.
How to see who is really running your work
Before you choose, make the invisible part visible. Four questions do most of the job. Who exactly will moderate my groups, and how long have they worked in food and drink? Who does the analysis, and is it a person or a tool? Can I see an example debrief, and does it end in recommendations or in observations? And what decision will this work let me make that I cannot make today?
If an agency cannot answer those quickly and specifically, the saving on the quote is not a saving.
FIS Group works in food and drink because the team genuinely loves it, and has spent its career in the category. That is what turns four focus groups into something a business can act on, and it is why the right people, on the right project, are worth far more than the line items suggest.
So the next time the quotes land on your desk, the question is not which one is cheapest. It is which one will still be worth the money a year from now.
If you would like to talk through a piece of qualitative work, or you want an honest second opinion on a quote you already have, Emma Wood and Chris Moxon are always happy to help.
Talk to us about your next piece of research.