Artificial Intelligence (AI) – is it a fad or reality for online research?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) – is it a fad or reality for online research?

AI to date:

Not surprisingly, AI is already in widespread use in online market research (MR) however many have yet to embrace its abilities. Like most of us, many are waiting to see how it can best be applied to Quant and Qual research methodologies.
So far it has mainly focused on making repetitive tasks faster and cheaper during the research project lifecycle (often operational). Suggestions predict that it will also end up replacing up to a conservative 60% of current manual market research tasks. Its MR uses are expansive, examples currently include: Chatbots, Automated Facial Coding, Automated Sentiment Analysis, Automated Transcription of Video, and Text Analytic Software.

The AI of the NEAR future:

Project Design. The platforms of the future will ask the users of the research some questions and offer key choices (such as quant or qual – spelling out the implications of the choices in terms of time, cost, meaning etc). See QuMind.co.uk for examples. Research project questions (e.g. questionnaires or discussion guides) will NOT be written from scratch; instead AI will harness the information available on which questions work best, and will create, or at least prepare 50%+ of this information automatically.

Project management. Time is key to handling problems during a project, AI is much faster than a human. Some of the problems found by the AI project manager will require a human decision, but that decision will be asked by the system and the options and their implications will be spelled out. In fact, many problems may not need any human intervention (check out QuMind.co.uk for example).

Analysis. There are already systems that can interrogate data and write reports (check out QuMind.co.uk for example). With AI project design and AI project management the AI analysis will be even more powerful; for example, drawing on wider information, taking things like cultural values into account, and looking deeper into the data than is normal. It is likely that the recommendations and interpretations generated by AI will be followed by a discussion between researchers.

Communicating insight and recommendations. An AI approach to communication would factor in (in a formal and analytical way) what forms of communication work best with the message and the target audience. This would include small things like colours, spelling, reading age, but also writing style, idioms, analogies and story structures.

Our conclusion:AI is here to stay, and it can only get better. With the large cost and time savings that it represents, it can only benefit researchers by freeing up more time for them to concentrate on where the real value is!

To see what AI can do for you and the benefits it can bring to your research, speak to [email protected].

QuMind is an AI powered, truly integrated Quant & Qual research platform. It boasts self-serve data collection surveys, pop-up communities, online Qual (diaries/focus groups), pop-up community and reporting analysis tools.