SOLUTIONS

Learn how new AI developments are helping companies take a more agile approach to market research and driving brand and company performance.

Inga Vailionis

September 30, 2021 | 5 min read

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Today’s companies are facing a big challenge: how to keep up with the pace of change driving the marketplace. Everyone is looking for a way to stay ahead and for the opportunity to shape what’s next. 

Here’s a suggestion: Look deeper into your own data. As the amount of data companies collect explodes, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are surfacing insights that can help knowledge workers make better decisions.

Take market research: Launching a study and collecting insights used to take months (if not longer), cost thousands (or more), and was consequently reserved for big initiatives. But today’s agile market research solutions allow teams to deploy market research quickly, collect data more frequently, and uncover insights in that data, fast—largely in part because they’re powered by AI.

In our recent study of 533 U.S. knowledge workers,¹ we found that a majority of this audience believes AI solutions are critical to company success. A full 89% of respondents believe AI has potential to help businesses better understand customers. And perhaps most importantly for market researchers: 40% of respondents said AI helps data analysts spot trends that humans could overlook.

40% of knowledge workers said AI helps data analysts spot trends that humans could overlook.

For insights pros, AI enhancements can offload time-consuming tasks and allow them to conserve their expertise for the most important and significant projects. For marketers, AI-powered insights can help them understand the impact of campaigns and initiatives as they happen, and give them the ability to pivot and change as fresh data becomes available.

Our Momentive Brand and Market Insights solutions incorporate our AI engine and sophisticated methodologies to help you instantly surface significant trends and sentiments—and uncover greater insights in your data

The best market research outcomes are a combination of humans and technology. Take an experienced researcher, add powerful market research solutions, and you’ll uncover insights that can truly impact company performance. 

But most companies don’t have unlimited access to experienced market research resources. That’s why companies are harnessing the power of AI to supercharge their research efforts.

With AI-based research solutions, researchers can reduce time spent on mundane tasks—like data cuts, spreadsheets, and sorting. AI does the heavy lifting so insights pros can focus their energy on uncovering more interesting and useful insights.

For example, a brand tracker might show a 2% increase in brand awareness. At Momentive, we take it a step further and apply AI-powered insights to our Brand Tracking solution that can surface a more buried insight; like the fact that movement on a key metric (such as purchase intent) was driven by a specific group (like females making over $100,000 a year). This kind of insight is incredibly valuable, and would be difficult to uncover without manually spending a lot of time slicing data by demographics.

By highlighting deep insights like these as they happen, the Momentive AI-powered platform helps companies take action quickly on metrics that can have an impact on company growth.

AI can surface insights on your brand and the competition. Companies can organize insights by key metrics or brand, show insights by monthly or quarterly shifts to surface more insights. This added functionality will give insights teams more flexibility in how they view collected data. 

Online panels provide an easy way for researchers to target a particular audience. But panels are as good as the panelists who respond, and identifying unengaged or fraudulent respondents is a critical part of collecting reliable data. 

ML and AI can assist in improving data quality by detecting panelist actions. Advanced algorithms combined with automation can identify and cluster groups of panelists based on specific behaviors, and flag issues like speeding, straight lining, and poor open-ended text answers.  

At Momentive, we leverage ML models developed over 20 years to provide technology guardrails that help us ensure high data quality. These models can help you get to segments and clusters of panelists that traditional rules might not.

We integrated our response quality model into our proprietary panels, can assign a panelist a reputation score, and use that score to suspend panelists who have repeated poor behavior. Providing high-quality data to our customers is core to our offerings.

AI adds value to every aspect of the market research process; from survey methodology to panel integration and analysis. However, AI works best with massive scale. Without large, well maintained training sets, machine learning algorithms can fall short of delivering the full potential. 

The Momentive AI engine is fueled by 55 billion questions answered on our platform over 20 years, plus the collective experience of our research teams. With an ideal balance of human perspectives and technology, our machine learning models can instantly surface significant trends and sentiments.

Engaging with panelists is a contributing factor to the success of your research. And AI has long been incorporated into the survey methodology of our platform. We strive to improve the quality of how a study is structured, and ensure panelists have a great experience. 

Why? We’ve found that an engaged panelist will provide higher-quality data. It's a two-way street to understand the experience that a panelist will get, and it's important to make sure your research study is presented in a way that will collect high quality data.

AI is at work in the Momentive platform to help surface the kind of insights that can power more timely, accurate agile decisions. Learn how to spend less time on manual analysis and more time driving impact in your organization with our AI-powered platform. 

Samuel Bokouch is vice president product management of Momentive market research solutions

¹This Momentive study was conducted in May and August 2021. We surveyed 533 knowledge workers, aged 24 and older, who live in the U.S. The sample was balanced by age, race, among other demographic variables, according to the U.S. Census.