The Role of AI in Market Research

The Role of AI in Market Research is indispensable. Explore how.

AI (Artificial intelligence) is making strides across industries, and market research is prominent of all. Imagine, your months of hard work in gathering crucial information, analyzing trends, and customer preferences, now done in hours. What a relief for every market researcher. 

However, many market researchers still hesitate to embrace AI within their research workflow. Whether it’s from losing their role or impacting data quality. The reactions are mixed.

According to a survey,

• 75% of consumers fear that they will lose their roles to AI, while,
• 65% of consumers use GPT5 for research, leading to misinformation and impacting survey results.

While the implications are valid, researchers can use AI to significantly improve their end-to-end research process if it is used wisely and responsibly.

In this article, we will help you understand the role of AI and how it is changing the research industry for good.

Understanding the Market Research Industry

For ages, market research has been a prominent source of gathering information for any brand to succeed. From analyzing customers’ preferences, and market trends, to analyzing gathered information to devise business strategies, market research has become a core part of every business. 

It helps businesses to have complete visibility of their potential customers, and understand their choices to deliver better products, services, and experiences for all. From startups to big brands, all believe in conducting market research for favorable results and saving tons of investments. Brands like Pepsico and McDonalds collaborated with third-party market research companies who run their research smoothly for desired results.

How PepsiCo improved their sales while partnering with market research agencies.

For example, let’s say PepsiCo wanted to understand how people in different Asian countries feel about their products. Instead of just using their own data or guessing, they worked with Standard Insights to ask local consumers directly. They ran surveys in seven countries to learn about people’s shopping habits and how they view PepsiCo’s brand. By gathering this data, PepsiCo was able to adjust its marketing strategies to better fit each country, making sure it could grow in areas where they were strong and improve where needed.

Let’s get into the benefits you can leverage using AI in market research. 

Also read- 50+ Profitable AI Business Ideas

How is AI Transforming Market Research Methodologies?

Now that you have a better understanding of market research, and how brands are leveraging it. Now, we will explore how AI and Gen AI fit into the equation. Let’s understand the benefits of teaming up artificial intelligence and market research together.

***First of all, you must know that AI is not going to replace human roles. 

1. AI Takes Over Repetitive Tasks

While humans are still key in market research, AI can handle time-consuming tasks like summarizing data, creating lists, and identifying key themes. This allows teams to focus on deeper insights and the bigger picture. 

Benefits of AI automation for Market research-

• Automatically gathers data from various sources
• Cleans data by removing duplicates and irrelevant information
• Analyzes large amounts of data in just minutes
• Provides quick, AI-generated insights and reports

As Christian Niederauer from Colgate-Palmolive says, AI sparks ideas and helps researchers think more creatively.

2. Faster Idea Generation

Instead of starting from scratch, AI can quickly analyze consumer data and suggest new ideas that resonate with your audience. It’s important to choose trustworthy AI tools and manage what data they access. AI can think beyond typical constraints, offering more creative ideas than humans might.

3. Simplifying Data Analysis

Market research requires tons of data and analysis to help businesses drive results. AI excels at sorting and summarizing large amounts of data. It can group respondents’ feedback into categories, like positive and negative mentions, making it easier to spot trends and improve your understanding of what consumers like and dislike.

4. Natural Language Conversations

AI-based market research helps businesses talk to customers in a simple, natural way. This makes it easier to collect information and improve service. Using chatbots and virtual assistants, companies can chat with customers instantly. They can give personalized advice, answer questions, and provide help right away.

These AI tools save time for both the business and the customers. They make the customer experience better. By responding quickly and accurately, businesses can make customers happier and build loyalty. At the same time, they gather useful information from these conversations.

5. Data Visualization and Reporting

Generative AI simplifies how businesses handle complex data by turning it into clear, visual stories. Advanced AI-powered project management tool helps you generate quick reporting with engaging visuals for better understanding. 

AI-generated reports and visuals help explain complicated information to teams. This lets them make quick and smart decisions based on data.

6. Making Insights Accessible for Everyone

Generative AI helps bring together different data sources and share clear insights with everyone in the company, no matter their skill level. It can analyze data and create easy-to-understand summaries. By making these insights available, all decision-makers can use accurate information to act quickly. This helps teams make better choices and respond to market changes effectively, keeping the company competitive.

Once you integrate AI market research tools and services, you will see faster and better results to improve your brand. 

A Brief Genai vs. Non-Genai Market Analysis

The difference is clear in how AI is making significant improvements in efficiency and accuracy.

Brands Using AI for Market Research

You will be amazed to know how leading brands use AI for better market research results.

• Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola uses AI to analyze customer feelings on social media. This helps them quickly change their marketing plans, improve customer experiences, and fix problems before they get bigger.
• Netflix: Netflix uses AI to recommend shows and movies. By watching what people like, can suggest what they might enjoy next. This helps keep viewers happy and watching.
• Spotify: Spotify uses AI to make personalized playlists for everyone. By looking at what users listen to, it creates custom mixes like “Discover Weekly.” This keeps users interested and less likely to leave the platform.

PepsiCo’s AI-powered market research

• PepsiCo uses generative AI market research to analyze customer feedback from sources like social media to improve product taste, texture, and packaging. 
• It also uses AI virtual assistants to handle routine customer inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues, improving product quality and customer service efficiency.

The results are inspiring enough to encourage new companies and existing ones to embrace AI in their end-to-end workflow. 

Top AI Tools for Market Research

Businesses are moving towards AI-powered market research tools to get hassle-free and efficient workflow. 

Let’s take a look at popular Artificial intelligence marketing software.

1. Crayon

Crayon offers a platform that uses AI to collect information about your competitors. Their tool scans a lot of data, including articles, websites, and reviews, to create detailed profiles of your competition.

It also generates helpful metrics, allowing you to compare your business using “battle cards.” You’ll receive alerts when there are updates or new information. This AI-powered platform is useful for sales teams, but market researchers can also benefit from it. It helps analyze things like packaging prices, messaging, and customer feelings.

2. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a tool many of us know and use. It has some great features specifically for market research that you might not know about.

For instance, ChatGPT can analyze the demographics and behaviors of your target audience to create customer personas. It can also scan data from social media, reviews, and other sources to find trends and understand customer feelings. Plus, it can help you come up with different survey questions to ask consumers during your research.

There are many AI tools available to assist you, but these are some of the best for your daily market research tasks. Now, let’s go through some steps to get started.

3. Poll the People

Poll the People is a reliable online survey tool designed to help you make smart decisions quickly and affordably. Here are some of its great features:

• Customizable Polls: You can create polls that fit your specific research needs.
• Targeting Options: It lets you focus on certain groups or demographics to get feedback.
• Instant Feedback: You can collect quick responses from your audience.
• Segmented Feedback: You can gather opinions from specific groups within your target audience.

There are several AI Tools for Market Research that can help you streamline your results.

Challenges of AI-Powered Market Research

AI is not all about benefits, it poses some challenges that might lead to misinformation and inaccurate surveys. Here are some notable challenges to consider.

• Data Quality Problems: Bad or biased data means bad results.
• Missing the Human Touch: AI can’t always catch cultural or emotional details.
• Expensive to Implement: AI tools can be costly, especially for small businesses.
• Context Blindness: AI might miss important details specific to certain situations.
• Privacy and Security Risks: Using customer data comes with ethical challenges, like privacy concerns.
• Stuck in the Past: AI relies on old data, which might not reflect future trends.
• Hard to Understand: It can be tough for non-technical teams to figure out how AI makes decisions.

By addressing these challenges, market researchers can confidently harness AI for more accurate and trustworthy insights.

Also read- AI in the Healthcare Sector

How OnGraph Can Help With AI-powered Market Research Tools

At OnGraph, we understand the need to conduct market research and the pain points associated with it. We found AI as a potential tool for revolutionizing market research.

To help businesses conduct research, streamline projects, distribute and execute surveys, survey creation, and detect survey frauds, we developed a range of custom and white-label AI-powered market research tools.

Here are our offerings- 

• Project management tool- from bidding to invoicing and reporting all from a single dashboard. 
• Panel management tool- connect and manage global respondents and panels for quick survey results.
• Fraud detection integrations- eliminate the risk of fraudulent respondents entering your survey with custom controls and third-party API integrations.
• Survey creation tool- build engaging surveys that are loved by your customers.
• DIY Market Research- Execute your research yourself eliminating the need for third-party agencies, and reducing cost and dependency.

The Future of AI in Market Research

The future of AI technology in market research holds great promise. As AI tools become part of market research, businesses can react faster, understand consumer behavior better, and offer more personalized experiences.

For businesses looking forward to streamlining their market research with next-gen tools, it is high time you explore the opportunities. AI has opened many opportunities for faster and more accurate research that resonates with every business’s needs. 

Start your research today- powered by AI.

FAQs

Q. What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering and analyzing data about a target market, customers, and competitors. It helps businesses understand market needs, trends, and consumer preferences to make informed decisions.

Q. Benefits of AI in market research?

AI in market research offers several benefits.

• Faster Data Analysis
• Improved Accuracy
• Enhanced Customer Insights
• Predictive Analytics
• Cost Efficiency

Q. How can I implement AI in my market research?

Implementing AI in your market research requires technical expertise and market research understanding. Our experts can help you with-

• Define Your Goals
• Choose the Right AI Tools
• Gather and Organize Data
• Train the AI Models
• Analyze and Interpret Results
• Monitor and Update

Q. Are there any tools for AI in market research?