7 Predictions for the Evolution of Research, Insights, and Consulting in 2024
2023 was a warmup for the changes ahead in the Market Research, Insights, and Consulting world in 2024. These 7 changes are going to fundamentally shift the ways things are done.
Well, 2023 was definitely a wild one for the Insights and Market Research industry. As things ramp back up for 2024, I wanted to put forth a few industry predictions for the coming year in order to spark ideas & actions for those seeking to push the boundaries.
AI-DERIVED
1. AI-Supercharged Research Instrument Development
To get the obvious one out of the way, Generative AI is going to have a much more formal role in projects, having a 5x to 10x+ impact on the speed of developing research instruments (surveys, qual discussion guides, etc.).
This will be driven both by "freeform generation" such as building out new/relevant attribute lists or creative qual exercises, as well as from more enterprise-tech-driven solutions like being able to scrape holistic past examples that are stored in a Microsoft/Google cloud drive to rapidly develop end-to-end instruments.
Less-structured, AI-driven conversational approaches to data collection will also be explored and related innovations will be developed that help strike the right balance between respondent experience and analytic integrity.
2. AI-Supercharged Analysis
As enterprise-focused tools enable secure sandboxing of sensitive data, firms will need to adopt a mix of techniques that will allow for much more efficient data analyses that will both increase the speed and quality of analyses.
Key hypotheses and initial findings will be available in hours or days instead of weeks, and it will be much quicker to do deep dives into niche discoveries or areas of interest throughout the analysis process.
Hybrid tools that blend generative AI-capabilities with pure computational capabilities (i.e., advanced analytics) will enable non-statisticians to start to run more sophisticated analyses like regressions and light segmentations using natural language inputs.
3. AI-Supercharged Reporting
While there has been an increased need from clients to integrate with data dashboards (like Tableau) over the past few years, the wave of companies focused on report automation will provide dashboard-like speed and accessibility while still allowing for custom reports to be highly formatted and story driven.
Designers will have to bifurcate efforts between focusing on the select few ultra-creative "hero slides" that still require human ingenuity and focusing on template generation and setup for the emerging report automation tools.
WAYS OF WORKING
With the AI predictions out of the way, on to the second-order effects that will happen in conjunction with the changes just mentioned.
4. Business Models Shifting to More of a Consulting Model
With AI supercharging research instrument development while an increasing number of automation tools become available, the cost structure of projects will need to change.
The new tools will drastically reduce the amount of time required to create, implement research instruments (e.g., program a survey, generate clean data outputs, auto transcribe and analyze qual, etc.), areas that traditionally have taken up a large chunk of staff time.
Business models will then shift to more of a pure consulting structure, with an hourly rate and fees associated with key areas:
Framing the need with an increasingly deeper understanding of the client business beyond the Insights group
Orchestrating the instrument development
Orchestrating analysis
Guiding the implications and storyline
Activating recommendations, with an increasingly deeper understanding of the client stakeholder needs
This requires a new "AI Management" mindset and skillset, which will need to be taught and adopted. It will also require a greater need for research practitioners to develop "holistic business expertise" and learn other industry-specific practice areas such as product development / product management, digital media, creative development, and much more, in order to be especially effective at the "bookend phases" (framing and activating).
5. Increased Client-DIY
The other effect of the increase in the ability to more quickly spin up and execute robust research will be that clients opt to run more engagements in-house using a “research stack” of software tools.
My guess is the integration of the different tools for research instrument development and subsequent phases may be closer to a 2025 timeframe, but creative and scrappy in-house researchers will be able to stitch things together.
This ultimately will allow for more "micro studies" to be conducted, and increasing the overall throughput of insights for Insights groups.
It will also further carve out agencies' roles to focus more on the especially complex, and engagements that could benefit from the "holistic business expertise" capabilities.
6. A Renewed Interest (read: Concern) in Data Quality
It was clear at the 2023 Insights Association conference that data quality remains a critical concern, especially among clients. However, as much as AI will supercharge practitioners, it will also supercharge bad actors, bringing data quality concerns to a new high point.
Previously, many quality control measures involved searching for inconsistencies in responses due to bots that were semi-randomized. If someone responded to different questions with predefined logical inconsistencies, they would be flagged as potentially fraudulent.
Now, AI-driven agents will be given an entire personality and persona that the bots will adhere to for the entirety of the survey, providing logic and thematic consistency in responses, and a very human-esque ability to respond to open ended questions.
With attention spans continuing to shrink, it will be increasingly difficult to get quality data for 15+ minute surveys. Qual will be increasingly relied upon as, for now, it's much harder to fake.
(I also believe this will put pressure on a broader paradigm shift in the way quantitative research and panels/data collection are approached, but that's a huge topic for another day…)
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE
7. Another Dimension
This one is a bit of a wildcard, but I believe Apple’s entrance to the VR/AR headset arena mixed with Meta's continuous development is going to bring these interfaces further into the mainstream. Innovative Insights/Consulting practitioners will help lead the way on how these tools and environments can be used to be more effective at communicating data, insights, and implications.
Specifically, there will be new ways to visualize data that were previously impossible in 2D PowerPoint/Keynote slides. Not only will this require a new skill set among designers to build with new tools, but it will also require creating a new mental muscle that will need to be stretched and strengthened among analysts that have long been trained to think in two dimensions.
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I did not include any predictions relative to the metaverse. While I'm still bullish on the concept and think it will become increasingly relevant for business and insights/consulting, my guess is that VR/AR hardware first needs to become more mainstream to allow for its proliferation.
Will be fascinating to see how much (and how quickly) the industry reacts to the groundswell of change. Looking forward to learning/discussing real-time. How do these predictions resonate with your line of thinking?
Would love to hear what other predictions you have for the upcoming year…