FPD1_Domain 2. Consumer Study

So, After domain 1 market study, here come to our domain 2 of the food product development 1, in this consumer study we were required to conduct a focus group discussion, writing transcripts and then analysed the data in a qualitative method.

Us when we joined Keto Malaysia Facebook Group.

Before conducting the focus group, we have to look for 20 participants. However, these 20 people must be someone who is able to provide information that we need. It's very hard to get 20 people especially people who are on a keto diet. To look for keto consumers desperately, we not only ask friends, or family, or aunties or uncles who know anyone on this diet. we also join the Malaysia Keto Diet group on Facebook (不入"虎穴"，焉得"虎子") 😓. We were so anxious to join the group is because we don't know them at all, they are complete strangers to us (At that moment, I realised it's time for us to grow up to be an adult). After we joined the group, we asked for permission from the admins to post in the group. There is some keto consumer are interested to join the focus group, however, it is hard to gather them in the same place and at the same time, it's quite difficult and challenging to manage it because of everyone has different available time😕. Luckily, there's an event for keto consumer at Damansara heights, which is a keto market bazaar selling some bakeries items for keto consumer. So, we were able to gather some keto consumers there to meet up and conducted a focus group there. After the focus group, We have gained a lot of information and also the perspective of keto consumers.

What I feel like when I listen to my own voice in the recording. 😬

The biggest lesson I have learnt from this domain is to always reflect myself. It is said so because when I was writing the transcripts, I spent a long time to listen to the video and the audio and I realised my own flaws when in conversation, I was very "gan jiong" (very nervous)😖 during the discussion and I was not really clear what I was talking about. And when I said something wrong, I tend to be very blank, not calm at all, and then I kept saying "er... er... er...". From here, I learnt to keep myself calm down when speaking and try to rephrase the sentence that I want to express. And listening back to the video or audio, it's a perfect time for me to listen to what I said and also analyse what other's said. It is also a time for me to train my listening skill. I learn to use this method to train myself to improve listening skill.

We were very desperate to graduate 😝 (when we were supposed to analyse the data)

However, when it comes to analysing part, it's quite challenging when analysing what other's said because people sometimes don't answer the question directly and need to study what they answered😬. But, I got through this with my team members, we discuss together during conducting the NViVo qualitative analysis. Even though NViVo software is said to be a qualitative analysis software, it still requires a human brain to analyse the sentence and categories to the right group. We spent days to sit down together and analyse the data together (5 brains analyse together is better than only 1 brain).

Everyone's brain starts to process.

When it comes to the presentation, I still felt very nervous but I realised I started to be mindful of that movement. I started to notice that I am nervous and anxious at that moment. This might be a small step for me to change and improve my speaking skill. My team member always encourages me and motivate me that I need to know what I have done in the presentation is all the best I can do at that moment💪, and I shouldn't stay on the past, but I need to be present at the moment and move on to improve myself for the next presentation.