AI is set to radically redefine the role of the researcher.
Instead of working on projects, the future will see researchers shift their attention to products. But what do we mean by this?
In the past, achieving scale as a market research agency relied on labour. Huge teams of researchers were required to gather and deliver the data and this type of scale is still visible in many of the traditional agencies running today.
While innovation in the industry in the early 2000’s reduced the need for large workforces, these challenger brands essentially shifted the hard work over to the client through self-serve survey writing platforms and report creation tools.
Today, disruptor brands are eradicating this problem, achieving scalability by applying human expertise to AI products that optimise the entire research process, from brief and survey design to data collection to analysis and reporting.
This evolution from labour-intensive projects to AI-driven products marks a pivotal transformation in the industry. The role of the researcher will continue to evolve. While they previously spent most of their time working with and handling data, they will soon spend most of their time funnelling their expertise into the development of research products.
Their domain knowledge isn’t a nice to have, it’s paramount to the success of these tech platforms. Using researchers to teach and refine these AI systems immensely improves the quality of the output - ensuring that they operate within the correct contexts and maintain the high standards of data interpretation and insight generation that we expect.
To stay competitive, successful firms will adopt AI, integrate it into their operations, and redefine the roles within their teams. This disruptive change offers a chance to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of market research, while also expanding the pool of organisations that are able to access it.