A Focus Crossroads company
Menu
Start a project

Audiences

Define the experience the research needs.

Industry is only the beginning. A useful target connects the work a person performs with the decisions, environment, and recent experience behind it.

Discuss an audience

Build the target

Start with dimensions, not a directory.

The strongest criteria describe experience that can be discussed and screened. Industry and job title help locate possibilities; they rarely establish fit on their own.

Questions that turn a broad audience into observable criteria
Target dimensionDefineExample signals
ResponsibilityWhat the person does or ownsApproves a purchase, operates a system, delivers a service
AuthorityThe decisions they influence or makeRecommends, evaluates, selects, signs, or administers
EnvironmentThe organization and conditions around the workCompany size, market, operating model, customer, or technology
RecencyWhen the relevant experience occurredCurrent use, recent evaluation, completed transition, or former role
GeographyWhere the experience must applyMarket, region, country, regulation, or service territory

Explore professional functions

Technician inspecting server cables with a tablet in a server room

Professional function

Technology, IT & Data

Technology studies often depend on where someone sits in the buying, implementation, administration, or daily-use lifecycle. The audience definition should separate technical influence from purchasing authority and current use from past exposure.

Role examples
Technology buyers, IT leaders, data and analytics leaders, product and engineering leaders, administrators, and technical practitioners.
Qualification lens
Current stack, functional ownership, role in the decision, implementation experience, organization environment, and recency of use.

Work in context

A job title can hide the most important criteria.

Ask who owns the decision, performs the task, uses the product, manages the budget, serves the customer, or experienced the event. Those behaviors create better screening criteria than a title alone.

See the qualification framework
Warehouse professional working among industrial inventory shelves

Feasibility

Difficulty comes from the combination.

The tightest requirement usually shapes the sourcing plan, timing, and incentive. A broad sector name does not reveal that constraint.

01

Incidence

How often the full criteria occur together.

02

Reach

Where likely professionals can be approached appropriately.

03

Participation

Method, duration, timing, and incentive expectations.

04

Evidence

What the study needs to confirm before selection.

Audience feasibility

Bring us the audience that looks difficult.

We will separate required criteria from useful preferences, identify unknowns, and frame a sourcing and qualification approach for review.

Discuss an audienceSee how we qualify