The first blog that I read was Vanessa's on a qualitative fieldwork facility in France called "Louvre Focus Group". I found this very interesting because I did my presentation on focus groups and I never thought to consider actual facilities meant for qualitative research as a location to conduct your focus group. I was thinking in a very narrow scope, considering libraries, stores, study rooms, restaurants, but never facilities meant for that purpose.
Vanessa makes an excellent point about conducting the focus group at a neutral place to prevent bias. As I was looking through the website I realized that I personally, would definitely feel more comfortable talking with strangers about my personal opinions and experiences in a such a nice atmosphere. Although I could also see this setting seeming a bit too professional for some people. It might make them feel as if they are being judged (for say an interview for a job), rather than giving their input on a product or service.
The next blog that I read was Laura's blog about qualitative research and the Celebrity Loop Forum. Obviously it is more difficult to conduct qualitative research with celebrities, given the fact that it is almost impossible to get in touch with them, so this Forum seems like a good idea. But a question that comes to my mind is how reliable is this site? While I was browsing I could not find one response from a celebrity. I also noticed that these celebrities are not who you would consider your current IN-celebs, but that is beside the point. It seemed that it was very easy to put a post on there, so I'm wondering if it would be just as easy to give yourself an official celeb name, include the word "official" and BAM! you are now a "celeb" in the Celebrity Loop Forum, something just seems off to me. I'm sure if you give any IT major this website for 15 minutes they could completely break it down and have everyone from Jay Z to Kristen Stewart on there answering the fans questions about them, which would in turn, most likely just cause a huge law suit.
On the other hand Laura did make a good point about business professionals using social media sites to find out what celebrities are saying about their products. I just think it would be a better idea to stick to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, rather than message boards that everyone in the world could potentially have access to.
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