This article explores four research design trends shaping consumer research in 2023, from getting closer to real-life moments and staying always-on to increasing speed and bringing consumers closer to business decisions.

Marketing research used to have a single focus on rational thinking by capturing people’s thoughts and beliefs. But this is not enough. Understanding human behaviour is complex and it’s rather by mixing different perspectives that we can get a 360° view and understanding. Research design is the overall approach used to shape how a study answers its research questions, from the methods and data collection to the analysis. In this blog, I’ll share four trends to revamp your research design and engineer research activities for impact.

#1 Closer to the moment of truth

Research is increasingly moving closer to the moments when people actually make decisions and experience products, services and brands.

In-context activities can help us capture people’s experiences as they happen, rather than asking them to recall them later. Geofencing, NFC and sound capturing can bring research into people’s real-life environments, while CRM and social data can add further context.

The opportunity for brands is to design research that gets closer to the here and now, capturing richer data around the moments that matter.

 #2 Always-on and in-sync

Consumer realities are constantly changing, making it increasingly important to stay connected to what people are thinking, doing and experiencing.

A group of consumers can act as the eyes and ears of a brand, providing an ongoing source of feedback and inspiration. Digital platforms such as WeChat and Instagram also make it easier to lower the barriers to self-reporting, while creative crowdsourcing can bring more people and perspectives into the research process.

The opportunity for brands is to move beyond one-off studies and build research approaches that stay in sync with changing consumer needs.

 #3 Need for speed

Speed is becoming a hygiene factor in research. As businesses need to make decisions faster, research needs to keep pace.

Quantitative research is well suited to automation, from data collection to analysis. But I think the big transformation will happen in qualitative research, where we can aim for deep yet scalable insight generation.

Generative AI has the potential to supercharge how we work with data and insights, helping researchers explore large volumes of information and identify patterns more quickly.

The opportunity for brands is to design research that delivers answers at the pace of business, while protecting the depth and nuance that make insights valuable.

 #4 Consumer Connect initiatives

It takes two to tango. Great insights only create value when the people making business decisions understand them, experience them and know what to do with them.

Consumer Connect initiatives bring consumers closer to internal stakeholders through activities such as video calls, giving teams the opportunity to hear directly from the people behind the data. Looking ahead, technologies such as AR and VR could create even more immersive ways for stakeholders to experience consumer realities.

The opportunity for brands is to make research more participatory, bringing consumers and internal stakeholders closer together so insights can shape decisions and action.

The four research design shifts at a glance

• Get closer to people’s real-life moments
• Keep research connected to changing consumer realities
• Design for speed without sacrificing depth
• Bring consumers and internal stakeholders closer together

As Indra Nooyi, former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO once said: “Insights should be one of the most critical business functions, we must re-invent it”. 

Putting insights at the heart of marketing decisions means rethinking how we design research and demonstrating the return on insights. These four shifts show how research design can evolve to make insight generation more relevant, agile and impactful.