Abstract:

Working as an insight person and/or market researcher in the corporate sector can be quite challenging, and not at all trivial. It implies that researchers need to work with various members of internal cross-functional customers and external consumers, using their knowledge of statistics and psychology. It also means operating with a broad range of market research methods, having general business acumen and understanding marketing, communication as well as customer services. Furthermore, it includes a long list of hard and soft skills and competencies such as analysis, synthesis, influencing others, logic, structure, the ability to see the big picture while being attentive to details, in addition to powerful presentation and persuasion skills, which can be applied at many organisational levels. This list is non-exhaustive in the ever-growing complexity of the matrix of organisations. Nonetheless, the essential focus of any researcher is to know their consumers and customers. This includes consumers or B2B customers (those who buy our products and services), and our internal customers?the crossfunctional teams who will use the results of our work. Knowing their needs and struggles is important if we want our research to be of high quality, actionable and useful for the business. In recent years AI, machine learning and other technological tools started to be used in market research, and the growing use of automation platforms enabled researchers to do more agile and DIY projects. All these technologies are supposed to make our jobs free from many mundane tasks, and allow us to focus our empathy and efforts on the more human-specific aspects. In other words, how to serve the needs and struggles of our customers, which I believe a machine will never do as well as a human.