Over the past 10-15 years, research project response rates among health care providers (HCPs), which includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, technicians, and ancillary personnel, have been steadily declining. When asked, some of the major reasons why HCPs stopped participating or participate less often in marketing research studies, are: redundant screening questions, long screeners capturing information only to be disqualified, too long surveys, and overall less time to allocate to providing feedback despite increasing honoraria rates.

In early 2012 I worked on my first sustainability-focused project. This involved helping a large bank understand how they could streamline their printed statements to lessen their paper footprint. Since that time, the world of sustainability has changed dramatically. Over the past several years the topic of sustainability has evolved, broadened and become more of a focus in some cases, a lightning rod in others. The terms have broadened to include eco-friendly, green, low-impact, carbon-neutral, net zero, real zero and others.

In the concluding chapter of Everything Is Predictable, Tom Chivers asserts that “…everything decision-related is Bayesian. It simply describes the optimal way to integrate new information with your prior best guesses. When you look at it like that, so many things seem to make more sense.” If you’re in the business of quantifying consumer behavior, it’s quite a compelling statement.

"I love how actionable this feels. There are real things we can do with this." That’s a quote from a recent client on an engagement that included a Market Research Online Community (MROC). That is tremendously gratifying to hear based on my early experiences with MROCs.

AI is rapidly advancing and shaking things up across a variety of industries, and marketing research is no exception. It’s clear that AI holds immense potential for analytic use in this field. Yet, we wanted to personally dig in to understand how AI stacks up against the claims. To gain a true picture of AI capabilities, MarketVision has been actively testing different AI analysis tools within our qualitative research practice to identify both their limits and potential to deliver value.  

Now that we have digested 2023 and are onboarding 2024, it’s a good time to assess where we are in the insights industry. After having an opportunity to connect with insights clients, research partners, and also peer companies at the Insights Association CEO Summit, several themes have emerged.