The past twelve months have been dominated by technological momentum and behavioural uncertainty. In a review of 2024, published by Research Live, industry leaders highlighted how this dichotomy has influenced recent trends in market research.
Supporting the former, Ray Poynter, Chief Research Officer at Potentiate, noted, “The maturing debate about synthetic data has been encouraging, and in terms of the concerns about panel data quality it is also timely.”
A similar observation was made by Tatenda Musesengwa, vice-president of audiences at Savanta, "I also see more and more interest in synthetic modelling and synthetic data. Although synthetic data is still in the early adoption phase, it will increasingly form the basis of quantitative research as researchers and clients begin trusting its reliability.”
Regarding consumer behaviour, Amy Cashman, Managing Director at Kantar, observed, “Politically, we’ve seen a tide of incumbent governments being removed from office across the globe. From a research point of view, this says something really interesting about how people are thinking and feeling. It seems that the challenges of everyday life over the past few years, from lockdowns to the cost-of-living crisis and creaking public services, have come home to roost – there’s been a palpable sense of frustration from electorates around the world.”
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| 2024 was characterised by two key trends in market research, the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence and a complex web of politically & economically morivated consumer behaviours. |
But what does 2025 have in store? Should we expect more of the same, or will this year hold new surprises that challenge us to evolve and adapt? Let’s look at 10 of the most anticipated trends before I offer a personal perspective on what to anticipate.
Looking ahead to this year, I am optimistic on several levels. Specifically, within the customer insight and market research sector, our willingness to embrace AI and new technology is a particular highlight. From the conferences I attended throughout 2024, I sensed a willingness to experiment and use emerging technologies in a way that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.
There is, of course, the scepticism that typically accompanies such innovation. But it is tempered by the acknowledgement that experiments, successful or not, are vital to our evolution. In the field of market research technology, we have to innovate, else risk losing out to the many industries seeking to broker knowledge in our stead. For example, customer contact centres, and service teams all have access to vast, unstructured sets of customer data – which AI is making increasingly accessible.
Throughout 2024, the advancement in AI-powered market research has been relentless. From my perspective, the most exciting (though arguable the most controversial) is the use of quantitative synthetic data. The significance of this development is difficult to overstate. Whilst AI applications have typically relied on language models, which enable faster qualitative analysis, the potential applications for AI to enhance quantitative data is limitless.
It’s still a contentious issue – and will remain so for a number of years – but has become an important debating point. I suspect we’ll see more real-world experiments and use cases emerge during 2025. Quantitative synthetic data is still in its infancy, but without serious improvement in the sampling quality x pricing trade-off, I believe it is inevitable that it will continue to gain ground.
One of the other areas where I expect we will see significant progress is the emergence of local language models. These are a variation of large language models, which have traditionally powered automated text analysis tools. Local variants combine machine learning algorithms with ringfenced data sets and retrieval techniques to create niche models which may be more applicable to individual organisations or topics.
As a result of these technological trends supporting more accessible data analysis, the key skill that we should be focussing on is that of curiosity. I think this has always been the case in research and analytics careers, because it is the root of all great insight. It’s behind desire to seek answers, which in turn drives the crafting of great questions. If researchers are not curious, then there’s no impetus to seek news ways of understanding customers or ask more interesting questions.
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| Curiosity underpins successful market research - it is vital not just to understanding customers, but also organisational culture and how insight is used. |
At FlexMR, we believe curiosity is key to building Customer Salience. This describes the degree to everyone – from frontline staff to executive leadership - across an organisation brings customers to mind in decision-making processes. An increase in Customer Salience leads to improvements in decision-making efficiency and effectiveness, plus better customer outcomes. But we can only drive it if we’re curious about both customers and our internal organisational culture.
Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge that there are great economic uncertainties in 2025. This year we will continue to grapple with tough market conditions, coming from a variety of underlying factors including: reductions in marketing budgets, the misplaced expectation that AI is solely an opportunity to drive cost-efficiency, sustained inflationary cost-pressures, and international trade tensions. Despite that, compared to the pandemic years, the resulting international trade crises and double-digit inflation spikes, I think this still represents a relatively stable year in which brands can take confidence in effective long-range planning.
Within this wider economic background, perhaps the biggest consumer trend we can expect to see is that of loyalty fatigue. There are many reasons for this, ranging from a general consumer sentiment that we are living through hard times, to a weariness with politics, and persistent low customer satisfaction rates. Combined, the result is a likely decline in brand loyalty, and an increase in brand switching. For researchers, this means that a robust understanding of real-time consumer sentiment and behavioural drivers will be more important than ever – requiring a mastery of age-old and emerging techniques alike.
In short, 2025 is shaping up to be a year of transformation for the market research and customer insight industry. At FlexMR, we’re planning a wide range of activities to help our clients seize emergent opportunities and defend against the challenges that come with change. Want to stay up to date with the latest? Follow us on LinkedIn or get in touch to find out how we can help you.