Consumer research is becoming increasingly important and more complex with every passing day. With attention spans running low, where consumers are presented with a multitude of options every second – it is perplexing to have the same consumers sit through a series of survey questions.  

At the same time, consumers expect their favorite brands to know them inside-out, and rightly so. With the amount of consumer data in their systems, it mustn’t be too arduous to nail marketing campaigns or product launches. However, it is tiring to manually sit through all that data, analyze it, and then draw inferences from it to pass on to the brands.  

It’s not just about the laborious data management. Let’s look at some of the drawbacks of manually driven traditional consumer research, to stress the need for consumer research automation.

The Need For Consumer Research Automation  

Manual Processes

The overwhelming amount of data makes it difficult for researchers to separate the good-quality data from the noise. Moreover, it takes around 3-6 months, which is way too stretched out for a world obsessed with real-time.  

Biased Feedback

From manual processes, unreliable insights are a short walk away. Relying on biased Quant and Qual feedback does researchers more harm than good. Consumer facing campaigns/products fail to fall in line with actual consumer requirements.  

No Room For Emotions

When 95% of purchase decisions are made by the subconscious mind, it is appalling that researchers choose to ignore the emotions. Consumer emotions drive behavior, which drives action or rather – purchase decisions. Gathering consumer emotions through manual research is unheard of.  

Also Read: Unlearn and Relearn Shopper Research, Because Covid-19!

Market Research Automation  

As technology transforms the market, consumption is faster, expectations are higher, and trends constantly shifting. Researchers cannot afford to wait around for 3-6 months to receive insights. Automated research steps in and takes the wheel to ensure researchers are not held up by their archaic processes.  

Shorter TAT  

Thanks to automation, the research community is slowly adopting agile research methodology. It is when large research project scopes are segmented into smaller ones, to ensure agility within research, receive faster and deeper insights.  

Improves Productivity

Automation brings agility. Now researchers can do more in less time. This results in marketers releasing more campaigns/products in line with customer expectations, in lesser time than before.  

Better ROI

Now that research TAT is shorter and insights are faster and actionable, researchers and marketers can take data-driven decisions. These reflect in increased brand engagement and better sales.  

Do-IT-Yourself  

Brands can now adopt automated research solutions, with which consumer research can be carried out in-house. By doing it themselves, brands can achieve the scalability of research they’ve always wanted.

Have a look: Why is DIY the Future of User Research?

The Rise of Consumer Research Platforms  

Automated research solutions/platforms are the tools with which researchers can adopt automation and agile research. These automated platforms come brimming with features and resultant benefits, it would be insane not to avail one right now.  

Consumer Research Platforms  

• Can support different methodologies, such as quant and qual, simultaneously, helping researchers understand consumers holistically.  
• Deliver speedy, actionable, and accurate insights, via healthy data practices, allowing researchers to take data-driven decisions.  
• Have data visualization capabilities where researchers can customize their dashboards, so they need only view the metrics they want to track  
• Grants all those involved in the consumer research project, as well as stake holders both visibility and transparency into data and methodologies.  
• Have access to panels across the worlds, empowering researchers with insights from native audiences.
• Helps researchers maintain a single repository for all their campaigns, previous and current, which can be accessed whenever they need customer intelligence insights.  

Also Read: A Leading Global Bank Leverage Emotion AI Tech To Lift Digital Conversion By 12%

Artificial Intelligence is Added to the Group  

Consumer research platforms coupled with AI and Machine Learning (ML), enables platforms to learn and identify patterns from itself. Let’s have a look at the new age technologies driving consumer research to better places.  

AI-led Behavioral Research

As mentioned before, 95% of purchase decisions are sub-conscious. With AI and ML bringing about accessibility and scalability to behavioral research, researchers can now understand their consumers actions and expectations better.  

Facial Coding  

Platforms are equipped with algorithms to authorize cameras on desktops and phones to capture facial emotions and expressions. These are then used to optimize the product before launch, helping brands favor its consumers’ emotions.  

Eye Tracking  

Cameras on desktops and mobile phones can be utilized to gauge eye movement to accurately pinpoint the areas of focus on a package, video, media, etc. These insights then help researchers to optimize placement of their brand elements to ensure better purchase and recall.  

Voice AI  

In focus group interviews, where the respondents say something and mean something else, voice AI can be of help. Voice AI is a combination of intelligent speech analytics and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, that can translate the emotions and intentions hidden in the tone and delivery of a respondent’s speech.  

In Conclusion…  

Adopt an automated consumer research platform today and ensure your researchers and marketers have enough insights to make data-driven campaign decisions. Fueled with behavioral analytics, researchers can now understand their consumers emotions, intent, and behavioral patterns helping them optimize their solutions and products to the attention economy.  

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