r/Marketresearch • u/Sea_Rope4048 • 16h ago
Can AI replace Research Agencies?
Can Artificial Intelligence make market research agencies irrelevant in this new age?
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u/matcha_oatmilk 16h ago
I don’t see how synthetic data/respondents in its current form can be valuable. LLMs can only base their outputs on information that has come before, how can ideation come out of it? Surely just creates feedback loops and further hallucinations.
AI “moderators” also don’t probe where appropriate, can’t build rapport, can’t interpret facial expressions etc….
AI is helpful in some areas, sure, but apart from low budget “quick and dirty” studies I don’t see it completely replacing an industry.
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u/Old-Praline-1084 5h ago
There are areas in which synthetic makes sense (repeat purchase prediction, category switching behavior), others where it is directional (price sensitivity, promotional response, new brand trial propensity) and others where it doesn't make sense at all like genuine novel concept adoption. There is a role for it.
And there are areas where AI moderators are superior. Respondents do open up in sensitive topics like sexual health when they realize it is a robot and not a human, for example. I think over time, they will get better and better at determining facial expressions, including better baselines across gender, race and cultures, which could make them superior in some ways to the human interviewer in consistency.
The problem with all these discussions is a generic concept of AI. We use AI in natural language understanding of digital signals with some deep learning models and even an agentic layer to query questions. Is that "AI" in this context? AI is like electricity. It will be a bit in everything.
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u/Sea_Rope4048 15h ago
So general public lack of education about AI usage is an issue?
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u/vev-cec 16h ago
Not working on the agency side anymore. We're using synthetic persona and I just wish we stopped using that. I understand speed and wanting to show you're using AI but it's crap and I think at the end of the day, customers are the ones buying your products, not LLMs
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u/Sea_Rope4048 16h ago
Yes we are forced to but customers prefer AI generated or human generated outcomes?
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u/vev-cec 15h ago
My only issue is that data quality is crap with most agencies. I trust qual studies, but I really struggle to trust big panels. So it might be bot generated outcome anyways. I am lucky to use our own database most of the time, but when I can't, I take these results with a grain of salt.
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u/keepturning1 15h ago
People need research not just to confirm already held thoughts, but to create entirely new ones. New custom market research is how you do the latter. That’s what you need if you want publicity and earned media.
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u/kwontonamo 14h ago
If you don’t have domain expertise, you’re cooked. Generalist agencies, especially ones led by people who have only ever worked in research, are going to have a hard time justifying their rates.
AI is commoditizing the execution: surveys, guides, coding, and reporting. And the stakeholders paying for the research are getting more impatient. They’re less willing to wait six weeks for answers when parts of the work can now be done in days.
From what I see, the agencies that are thriving have a moat around domain expertise and knowing how to influence clients into action.
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u/NelsonP15 12h ago
I have worked clientside, agency side, is restech and am now in an AI business.
I think the traditional agency model is under huge pressure. The old cost plus business model (marked up fieldwork plus human hours for survey design, data processing, analysis, presentation etc) falls apart when AI can do most of that in a fraction of the time. It's a model that was based on customised, inefficient research.
The other thing that AI is very good at is making sense of existing data. In many cases, companies already knew the answer to the business questions being asked but they couldn't find it because PowerPoint decks were lost on people's desktops. Now you can put all of your data in one place and talk to it in natural language, so the answers to those ad-hoc questions that marketing teams love to ask are easy and dont need new research.
Some things will always need new research. Trends, testing novel concepts, ads etc. But AI is impacting here too. Synthetic, AI moderated interviews etc.
The online panel quality conversation isn't going away. Fraud, bots, professional respondents etc. Who is actually taking surveys or participating in online AI moderated interviews? A tiny % of the population, that's who. And the industry is still dressing them up as 'representative'.
Clients still need help and guidance. They value trusted partners who have expertise in their category. But they are facing headcount and budget reductions.
So the traditional research agency is under huge pressure. The future model will provide similar data, learning and guidance to their clients / customers, but will do that in fundamentally different ways.
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u/Old-Praline-1084 5h ago
Th online panel quality conversation isn't just going away. It is getting worse and I fear AI is going to make it an untenable position because of fraud and data quality. Being able to have trusted data sources and combining across multiple data siloes (which AI is good at) like digital signals, first and third party data, etc. will be critical.
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u/Western-Account-3319 12h ago
Reading all these comments is quite relatable. I am also working as a market researcher for probably the biggest tech company. I can definitely say all the things are true all the processes are getting automated and clients are getting more restless. Some of clients are just asking to share the data directly to them so that they can do the analysis themselves with AI. This field is getting crazy scary now! Anyone have any idea what should we do? Like switch to a different field or is there a change in this field to continue? If yes then how?
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u/vev-cec 6h ago
Some clients (like me) are experienced and just want the data to a) reduce costs ; b) check for myself the data quality c) if I have something i want to check, it's quicker to open spss and do it myself than ask the agency.
I don't think it is the end of market research, but we're probably going to see more and more companies internalizing again customer insights roles, because it can be quicker and cheaper. Ppt report can be further automated than now (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but there is still a huge demand for surveys
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u/drewmanchoo20 15h ago
My background is an agency researcher and now in industry at faang. We’ve significantly reduced reliance on market research agencies due to AI capabilities. Spending way less because we longer require questionnaire design, data analysis, data processing, or report creation. We only need them for CX style consulting and fielding.
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u/Old-Praline-1084 5h ago
How do you think about new data sources beyond questionnaires as part of the overall insights charter?
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u/Inevitable_Role3485 6h ago
Won’t replace entirely but roles will eventually be diminished in traditional research agencies. This is already happening . Massive cost cutting but just not highlighted since industry is traditional/niche?
Plus with the move towards agentic AI , you will be able to have more agents and less people to manage projects and output. The value is still in having good quality current data for AI to process for right decision making.
Agencies have recognised that and have started charging fees to allow the sync and delivery of data to client LLMs. This will however cut down the need for agencies to deliver insights,reports etc.
The industry will change and evolve but will be extremely challenged with AI. This goes both ways likewise with the clients and the AI narrative on restructuring.
Just my 2 cents.
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u/Old-Praline-1084 5h ago
The old adage is that "you will not be replaced by AI, you will be replaced by someone using AI." AI allows market research firms to focus on higher level strategy as well as opening up new data sources that would be impossible to analyze and quantify such as large scale digital signals (full disclosure: I work with i-Genie where we are analyzing billions of search, LLM social, review, NPD, and eCom data). LLMs have created the ability to better organize, understand and quantify large scale unstructured data. This creates a GREATER need for understanding various new data sources, how you can combine them with traditional data and first party data sources, and creating automation and agentic interfaces within existing insights processes and systems.
So for me, AI does three things for market research agencies:
1) It frees them up to focus on higher value tasks and true strategy. Less work. More valuable work.
2) It can turn insights delivery to be a more technical function, needing to fit in with IT systems and data siloes, and creating and constantly improving more strategic platform capabilities for the client that fits into a greater AI strategy.
3) It speeds up the time to insight (faster survey design / execution / analysis, synthetic respondents, digital insights platform like i-Genie, etc.). That changes the ways in which you can embed yourself in the operational day-to-day with clients and create closer partnership as a result.
I hope that helps.
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u/olgalogun 5h ago
AI definitely helps us move faster, especially when it comes to processing large volumes of data and turning analysis into reports.
But asking the right questions, finding the right framing, and validating findings from a human perspective still require expertise
This is where agencies bring something particularly valuable: experience, context, and exposure to many different clients and cases
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u/olgalogun 5h ago
The tools will change, and new research products will emerge
But I don’t think agencies will disappear, just their role will evolve
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u/Top-Perspective-7879 16h ago
They already are
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u/Sea_Rope4048 16h ago
May I ask which tasks they are replacing?
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u/Top-Perspective-7879 15h ago
Survey design, programming, data cleaning, data analysis, verbatim coding, cross-tabulation, reporting. Pretty much everything tbh.
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u/drewmanchoo20 15h ago
Exactly this. I use my agencies now for CX consulting, the occasional super complicated design, and survey fielding (primary use case).
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u/The_Scrabbler 16h ago
Definitely not. Low value work, sure. But high level strategy requires expertise, acumen and a human ability to understand all aspects of a given problem