Insight + Artificial Intelligence: the market research industry is about to reinventing itself
Last week, I attended the IIEX Europe 2024 in Amsterdam. I supported the company data IQ AG, a Swiss company which positions itself for “Mining the data gold of your organisation” and its founder Stefan Oglesby, a long time market research veteran and data expert. He is consolidating his long-time expertise in practice and technology into the qualitative research AI platform insight-lab.ai.
“IIEX” stands for Insight, Innovation and Exchange and the conference gathers experts like marketing analysts and researchers as well as marketeers, discussing developments from technical perspective, best practices from methodology and implementation standpoints. It is about driving business with insights, innovate on sustainable level, applying AI and transforming insights into actions.
Data is the most valuable asset of companies. This was always the understanding of market researchers and is not a novelty like the buzz around “Big Data” tries to persuade. Collected data, coming from quantitative and qualitative methods, was always the basis for their analysis. The evolvement and augmentation of technological capabilities (“Big Data”) brought also new disciplines to the market research industry like data mining, online research and so on. Over time, market researchers became experts who are in the position to deliver meaningful INSIGHTS and guide companies also through strategic innovation and change management initiatives.
With Artificial Intelligence, also the now called “insight industry” enters a fresh area. AI offers a new level of analysis capabilities, especially in the field of qualitative research. Focus Groups and interviews are data-heavy, their statement lies in text. AI offers now the capability to process this data automatically.
So what is the difference today, seen from my marketing perspective? Numbers are no longer needed, text alone does the job. Till now, data was structured in text which was associated with numbers (“Relational Database”). This is gone. Text alone does the magic of insight when aligned with AI in a smart way.
When I was walking through the exhibition of IIEX 24, I read “Artificial Intelligence” at every booth. It is obviously the new Gral of the industry. We are all aware that AI and its domains machine learning, neuronal networks raise burning questions besides technology. The question is, how to use AI for insights which lead to ethical decisions. Insight as an industry sees itself today as driver for initiatives for change and innovation, not only on a marketings level, but also company strategic. Entering this field means taking over (more) responsibility. And this is why digital humanism and its meaning for business must be brought into the discussion already when looking at the marekt. Market Researchers – Insight Experts – were always bound to ethical standards like data protection etc. So it is now especially interesting to follow how the industry will keep up with AI, from technical and non-technical perspective.
The plattform insight-lab.ai has after its soft launch in February 2024 already more then 180 active users.
Trial is free: Have a look and “unleash” the power of AI in qualitative research.
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