The third research aim was to explore how the audience perceived the masculine representations from the alcohol advertisements. In other words, the aim was to subjectively investigate the perspectives and interactions of the audiences to the TV alcohol adverts. When conditions like a time-limitation of the research study are present, in order to gain the richest set of information, focus groups are often a chosen qualitative approach to be adopted. Focus groups are also designed as a triangulation to cross-check the validity of the other methods employed by the researcher, such as content analysis and in-depth interviews to determine whether the media’s receivers can interpret the advertising’s messages correctly, partly or not at all. Therefore, focus groups was the appropriate research tool to utilise in order to explore how the audiences decode the alcohol advertising messages.
Focus groups, also known as group discussions, are popularly applied in market research and advertising industries in order to explore consumer insight into products or some particular issues (Morgan, 1988; Arthur A. Berger, 1998). They take the format of a kind of group interview by selecting and gathering people to join organised events to talk about the specific topic (Powell and Single, 1996). The unique characteristic of the focus group is that it works with the interactions between a moderator and the participants within the group, which generates a group dynamic that stimulates the group members to express their opinions and to contribute to the broad issues (Morgan, 1988; Morgan, 1997). Anita Gibbs (1997) suggested the benefit of this approach was that within a short period of time a researcher/moderator will extract a large amount of information while conducting a focus group, when compared with an in-depth interview, which is applied to explore very specific issues.
For the current study, focus groups were applied to explore how consumers in different groups, ages, and areas read and understood the alcohol adverts. The aim was to explore the heterogeneity of audiences’ perceptions, which might agree, disagree or remain ambivalent. Thus it was anticipated the participants in the groups would stimulate and contribute to these issues in broad terms (Priest and McCullar, 1996; Arthur A. Berger, 1998; Priest, 2010).
The focus group’s aim is also to encourage the participants to feel free to discuss the given issues, as well as allowing the moderator or group facilitator hosting the interview to investigate people’s thoughts or attitudes about the topic under discussion (Wimmer and Dominick, 1983; Arthur A. Berger, 1998). The skill and experience of the moderator of a focus group is essential in order to keep the discussion on track (Ward and Hansen, 1987). A moderator has to make sure that all the participants are given a chance to express their opinions about the issues otherwise, in some cases, it is likely a few participants will monopolise the conversation. A moderator also has to be conscientious, a good listener, talented and able to encourage the group members to respond to the given topic. If a moderator were overpowering, it would intimidate some participants or the key informants. Equally, a moderator should not favour particular participants (Krueger, 1988). The skills and the principles for running a focus group are needed for a researcher or a moderator when conducting a group discussion (Priest, 2010). Additionally, a relaxed and friendly atmosphere is beneficial, as it encourages the participants to notice and react genuinely to the comments among the group members, which leads to a better quality of information as well.
During my role as moderator for the focus groups, in some cases I did notice that one informant always tried to dominate the issues, whereas my intention was to encourage everyone to discuss and contribute. In these instances, I began to ask the name of other participants, in order to avoid individual domination of the conversation. At the same time, I was conscious that I also should not dominate the conversation and discussion. Furthermore, before starting the focus groups, I began with a friendly talk about general topics then introduced myself, and then let everyone introduce themselves, in order make everyone feel comfortable talking. Fortunately, all participants participated well and gave valuable information about the issues.
3.3.3.1 Sampling process for the focus groups
In terms of the organising of focus groups, Gibbs (1997) confirmed it is not easy to choose the most suitable volunteers to attend the group discussions. Hester (1996) argued that the group participants should be a heterogeneous mix, which should include members from a variety of backgrounds, genders, class and diversity of employment. This would provide various perspectives and insights that are useful to contribute to the given issue. In contrast, if a group is very homogeneous with the same particular demographic characteristics, a diversity of information might not appear (Kinnear and Taylor, 1996).
The advice regarding the suitable number of people to join a focus group is varied. MacIntosh (1993) suggests it should consist of six to ten attendants for each group; Patton (1990) five to eight people, Hester (1996), McDaniel and Gates (1998) suggested eight to twelve participants and Goss and Leinbach (1996) proposed up to fifteen participants per group. The time duration for the group discussion is normally one to two hours (Gibbs, 1997). For the current study, it was decided the numbers of participants would be five persons per groups (see Table 3.4). It was considered that five is a number that would allow myself as the moderator to encourage everyone to talk. All participants gave informed consent to participate in the focus groups. During the conducting of the focus groups, I provided some snacks and beverages for participants, and also gave remuneration (300 Thai baht per person, about £6) to cover the participants’ travel costs.
Table3.4 the demographics of the participants in the focus groups
A non-probability purposive sampling was applied to search for the participants for the focus groups. In terms of the techniques used to recruit the participants, a purposive technique was used to determine the characteristics of the people attending the focus groups and then a snowball technique used to find further individual participants (Patton, 1990).
For the purposive technique, the criteria set for the participants’ included ‘age’ and the ‘area’ they came from (Table 3.5). The use of mixed backgrounds was aimed to achieve heterogeneity. The ‘age’ criterion divided people into three groups, namely (i) teenage to newly graduated university students (18 to 27 years); (ii) young workers or young executive (27 to 37 years, and
(iii) adult executive workers or (38 years and older). For the criteria of ‘area’, the criteria included Bangkok and surroundings areas, the up country and rural areas. Further information of participants’ personal data is presented in Appendix A2 & A4.
Table 3.5 Lists of the participants
Importantly, the reason that the focus groups using the mixed gender participants as the dynamics is because the implications of both males and females’ perspectives could be reflected the agreements or the common-senses of what to become Thai ideological men and masculinities, as Connell (2005, 77) argued: ‘the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustain a leading in social life’. Since to become the hegemonic men and masculinities must be accepted by public consents from both males and females. As Connell (2005) argued that ‘hegemonic masculinity as the configuration of gender practices which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantee the dominant
position of men and subordination of women’ (ibid). This means that to become the hegemonic men and masculinities, technically it is needed to be accepted by the public consents from the society, as well as, the legitimacy of the patriarchy, in order to guarantee the dominant position of men and the subordination of women. For this reason, this project therefore employed the mixed gender participants, both males and females, in order to reflect the overall public consents or ‘common-senses’ of what to become ‘hegemonic men and masculinities’ in Thai society (ibid, p.72).
3.3.3.2 Data collection for the focus groups
All of the focus group discussions were video recorded so that the discussions could be transcribed for later analysis. However, before any focus group conversation began, I (as the moderator) had to gather informed consent from all the participants regarding the video recording, due to the ethical issues associated with qualitative research. An assistant was appointed at the commencement of each group session to help the researcher and the participants during the discussion. Each session took place at the meeting room of the Rajamongala University Pra na khon, in Bangkok; the use of the meeting room was free. One focus group session was completed per day, so that it took six days to finish all sessions. All sessions were completed by mid-April 2014.
Each focus group session took approximately one and a half hours, and the process was conducted as follows. Firstly, prior to the commencement of the discussion, I asked participants to complete a consent form and to provide general demographic information, such as gender, education, favoured alcohol consumption and behaviour, as it was advantageous to be able to use this information during the discussion and for the purpose of data analysis.
To open the conversation, I introduced myself to everyone and then asked them to introduce each other, in order to build a relaxed atmosphere that would benefit the conversation. During the discussions, I projected the TV alcohol adverts to the participants. For the TV adverts projected, I had selected those that were most representatives of each theme related to brand masculine representations. Following the adverts, I facilitated the discussion by asking the opinions of the participants about the adverts that have been shown and endeavoured to let everyone contribute on this issue and give their opinion. Overall, the focus groups went well. However, some people did not talk much. I politely called their names and gently focused on
them, while trying not to make them feel uncomfortable. Although the focus groups were time- consuming, as there were 6 groups with each lasting 1.5 hours, the outcome provided a range of detailed perspectives that was beneficial to the analysis of the Singha and Chang masculine image representations in their brand promotions.
After completion of the focus groups session, transcription of the recordings was completed, and the coding exercise implemented to identify potential themes. This latter exercise was a time-consuming and a recursive process, since it involved several processes for data analysis such as familiarisation with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, naming themes and producing the report (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The key research question for the focus groups was to explore how the audience perceived the representation of brand masculinity presented in relation to the Singha and Chang brands. Themes which emerged from the discussions were those such as monarchy loyalty, inspirational capitalist, SR, Thai nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. The coding process was based on the Stuart Hall (1980) model of message decoding, categorising three types of audience reading of the messages, which were: agree, disagree, and ambivalent. This model was applied to the first stage of coding, with the objective being to determine whether the participants agree, disagree, or are ambivalent to the ad content (meanings and implications of the masculine representations) and can identify the advertising emotional appeal. The coding outcome related to these themes is presented in Appendix A5: A blueprint of the thematic analytic outcome. An example of the focus group questions is attached in Appendix A3.