This makes the use of telephone-based research inherently less valuable. In order to properly test the effectiveness of the word/image combinations, the audience must see mock-ups of the cards. The greeting card industry tends not to have early-adopters, so the research should focus on a mainstream audience.
This leaves the option of either an in-person focus group or an online focus group. The markets for paper cards and online cards differ in terms of their demographics, so the best way to measure the effectiveness of paper cards is to use in-person focus groups. The targets can be drawn from any city with a large Hispanic population....
Given significant differences in Hispanic populations in the two largest markets of Los Angeles and Miami it is important that groups in those two markets be tested at the minimum. An additional technique that should be incorporated is that of the group interview in which the moderator records on a large, blank sheet the views of the interviewees. This will give the interviewer a better sense of the emotions that different sets of words and images convey amongst a broad population. This will yield certain characteristics in words/images that elicit specific responses from the interviewees, to give the card designers more guidance in their designs.
