When designing some of the earliest wireless headphones (once Bluetooth was good enough to deliver a brand-appropriate quality experience) it became important to know the basis on which people might choose one pair of headphones over another.

Surveys and question / answer in focus groups had led to the conclusion that brand expectations and impression were very dominant, along with visual design. Neither audio quality or comfort figured very strongly, which seemed strange.

So, we arranged an unfocus group or two with the intention of trying to get closer to the authentic decision-making process. Much of the discussion followed fairly normal focus group ideas, but we had asked them to bring in their current headphones or earphones and we put ore time into talking about how they had chosen them. And we had numerous examples of headphones around the room for them to discuss as well.

At the end of the group they were free to go and pick up $100 on the way out, or else they could stay and choose one of the sample headphones we had been discussion, which all had a value between $150-250. What followed was an 45-60 minute long discussion between various pairs of participants that was dominated by discussion of audio quality and comfort and hardly touched on visual design and brand.

And yet, their final choices as they left with their new headphones were based on visual design and brand reputation – all the audio quality and visual design discussions left them feeling confused and very unsure of their preferences.