Market Research
Reimagining Market Research: AI’ s Role In Building Consumer Centric Brands
By Chris Githaiga
Artificial Intelligence( AI) is no longer a futuristic concept- it’ s the engine driving modern business transformation. From retail to healthcare, AI is reshaping how organizations understand consumers, how they make decisions, and potentially, how they stay competitive. In 2025, the stakes are higher than ever: brands must harness AI-powered consumer intelligence to thrive in a landscape defined by personalization, speed, and data-driven strategy.
The New Era of Consumer Intelligence
Gone are the days of relying solely on surveys and focus groups. Today’ s consumers interact with brands across dozens of digital touchpoints- social media, e-commerce platforms, mobile apps, and voice assistants. AI enables businesses to tap into these interactions in real time, extracting insights that are faster, deeper, and more actionable than traditional methods.
Key capabilities of AI in consumer intelligence include real-time sentiment analysis from social media and reviews, predictive modelling to forecast consumer behavior, hyper-personalization of marketing and product recommendations and automated segmentation based on behavioral and demographic data.
According to the 2025 Consumer Adoption of AI Report, over 54 % of consumers now engage with AI-powered tools during their shopping journeys, and trust in AIgenerated insights is steadily increasing.
Market Growth and Industry Momentum
The global AI market is experiencing explosive growth. In 2025 alone, the AI market size is projected to reach $ 371.71 billion, with forecasts suggesting it will soar to $ 2.4 trillion by 2032 at a compound annual growth rate( CAGR) of 30.6 %. This surge is fueled by increased demand for real-time insights, expansion of AI-asa-Service( AIaaS), and integration of AI into cloud infrastructure and enterprise workflows.
In the realm of market research, AI is transforming how companies collect and interpret data. Tools like Clootrack, Qualtrics XM, and BuildBetter. ai are leading the charge by automating qualitative analysis, generating dynamic personas, and streamlining product development decisions.
AI Trends Shaping Consumer Behavior in 2025
Several key trends are redefining how consumers interact with brands- and how AI helps decode those interactions:
Generative AI in Search and Discovery: Consumers increasingly use tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini to research products and services. In fact, 47 % of consumers now rely on generative AI for purchase decisions.
Generative Video and Synthetic Media: Beyond text and images, generative AI is now creating short-form videos from prompts( e. g., OpenAI’ s Sora) and even 3D objects and virtual environments. This is revolutionizing entertainment, advertising, and e-commerce.
AI-Powered Personalization: From product recommendations to dynamic pricing, AI tailors experiences at scale.
Platforms like Algolia Recommend and Delve AI use behavioral data to deliver hyper-relevant content and offers.
Emotion and Attention Analysis: AI tools such as Canvas AI and Social trait analyze facial expressions, tone, and attention heatmaps to understand emotional drivers and optimize creative assets.
Synthetic Data and Simulated Surveys: To overcome privacy concerns and data scarcity, businesses are turning to synthetic data and AI-simulated focus groups. These methods allow for scalable, bias-free insights without relying on realworld respondents.
Agentic AI and Autonomous Workflows: AI agents are evolving from passive tools to proactive collaborators. These systems can break down complex tasks into steps, make decisions independently and even adjust actions based on outcomes. Think of them as digital interns with initiative. Microsoft’ s Copilot, Google’ s Project Astra, and open-source tools like Auto- GPT are leading the way.
Multimodal AI Models: AI is becoming more human-like in how it processes information. Multimodal models can interpret text, images, audio, and video simultaneously enabling natural, flexible interactions. This is transforming industries like healthcare( e. g., combining radiology scans with patient records) and retail( e. g., visual search engines).
Emotion-Aware and Empathic AI: AI is learning to read human emotions through facial expressions, voice tone and pitch, as well as behavioral cues. This enables more
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