10.3: AI and market research
Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a groundbreaking approach to market research, capable of significantly accelerating and enhancing the entire process. AI algorithms can process vast amounts of data at incredible speeds, providing real-time, actionable insights. These algorithms are capable of analyzing customer behaviour, market trends, and even predicting future market conditions, thereby offering startups a competitive edge.
AI-driven solutions can automatically enrich customer profiles with a multitude of data points, such as geographic location, company size, and technology usage. This level of detail enables more effective customer segmentation, allowing customized marketing strategies to different customer personas.
The integration of AI into the market research process represents a significant advancement in the field. By automating much of the data collection and analysis, marketing teams can free up valuable resources to focus on strategy and implementation. Furthermore, the real-time nature of AI driven insights allows marketers to be more agile, adapting to market changes as they happen rather than reacting to them after the fact. (Mallikarjunaradhya & Pothukuchi, 2021).
As discussed in Module 1.2 and Module 1.3, ethics and privacy are paramount when approaching any market research project. Many of the market research AI tools that are being developed and have recently launched are tailored specifically to market research companies for analyzing open coding from quantitative research to quickly review consumer sentiment; to using AI from survey data to predict the success of a new product; to helping a focus group facilitator generate a series of draft questions for qualitative research. However, most students studying market research as part a marketing curriculum will at some point – either in studiesn or in work – will need to conduct a series of informational interviews or deploy a survey. Many of the commonly used market research tools – such as Qualtrics, Glimpse, SurveyMonkey, Cambri, etc. – have AI already built into some of its analytics tools and will probably continue to grow their AI capabilities.
Qualtrics, a market research company, surveyed 250 market researchers in 2018, and at that time 93% of researchers saw AI as a threat, and most respondents felt that support and pure analysis market research jobs in the future would be redundant; conversely, strategic and qualitative jobs are not being predicted to be affected in a negative way. Interestingly, only 52% of the survey respondents were confident as to what AI even was, so there is a long way to go for folks working in this industry to be literate and ready for what lies ahead.
In conclusion, marketers need to have the baseline knowledge as to how to question secondary sources, how to write a survey without errors, and other best practices covered in this open education resource, as well as a desire to stay curious and learn about the challenges and opportunities that exist with AI.
Here are some helpful charts to help marketers assess when and how AI can be used:
Resources for continued learning
AI literacy is a journey that will continue as the field of market research evolves and new AI tools and opportunities arise. In order to maintain AI literacy, ongoing learning is important to make informed choices.
The Market Research and Consumer Behaviour students from St. Lawrence College share some ways that they hope to continue to learn about AI over the rest of their college studies and beyond.
“I will try to keep on exploring different features of AI which sharpen my skills of prompting to AI as well there are various free courses.”
“I think it’s essential to commit to a continuous process and gain some hands on experience using AI through some internship and project. Those job skills are highly valuable for me.”
“Keep researching the latest AI trends/problems/ethical issues. Ask questions to our faculty members. Use it! Stay up to date and learn how to use it properly – keep practicing.”
“During studies, take AI courses, engage in practical projects, and join AI-related groups. After graduation, continue learning through online courses and pursue specialized AI certifications. Network with AI professionals, apply AI in marketing roles, and stay informed about industry trends through blogs and publications.”
Special thanks to the MARK100 class of Winter 2024 for supporting the development of this OER with your insights!
Here are a number of free or low cost resources that can be explored to learn more about AI. Please note these resources have not been thoroughly reviewed by the OER team, but have been scrutinized from reputable sources and were appropriate to include at the time of publication.
Free / low cost AI training:
IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate from Coursera
Google Cloud Introduction to Generative AI from Coursera
University of London Machine Learning for All from Coursera
University of Pennsylvania AI for Business Specialization from Coursera
Lund University AI, Business & the Future of Work from Coursera
Introduction to Prompt Engineering for Generative AI from LinkedIn Learning
Getting Started – Teaching with Generative AI – LibGuides at BCIT
Digital Partner – The Fundamentals of ChatGPT from Alison
ChatGPT, Midjourney, Firefly, Bard, DALL-E AI course on Udemy
Stanford University Introduction to Artificial Intelligence on Udacity
AI Matters course through The Open University (there is a small cost for those outside of Europe)
Additional resources
Ethics and Governance of AI initiative carried out in conjunction with the MIT Media Lab
Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group
AI Ethics quiz from Monash University
open verse – extensive library of free stock photos, images, and audio, available for free use
Futurepedia AI resource platform
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Ethics and Governance of AI
References
Mallikarjunaradhya, V., & Pothukuchi, A. S. (2021). The Future of Saas Startups: How AI Accelerates Market Research and Product Development. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research & Review, 2(4), 444–450. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED
Qualtrics. (n.d.). How AI will reinvent the market research industry.
Teo, W., Teoh, Z., Arabi, A., Aboushadi, M., Lai, K., Ng, Z., Pant, A., Hoda, R., Tantithamthavorn, C., & Turhan, B. (2023, February 19). What Would You do? An Ethical AI Quiz. CC BY 4.0
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2023). ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in higher education quick start guide. CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO
