India, March 20 -- Old, traditional survey-based consumer research is passe. With digital media capturing more than 60 percent of India's advertising share, market research through social listening, product reviews, blogs and vlogs is in. Amit Adakar, veteran market researcher, shared these insights soon after taking over as the India CEO of the global consumer insights firm i-Genie.ai. "In India, market research, specifically, survey research is not keeping pace with technology or consumers. In today's attention-deficit, non-linear world, consumers are consuming content, generating content and making decisions at the time and context of their choosing. Survey research still relies on consumer's memory and their unvalidated claims," said Adarkar, who will build i-Genie's brand equity tracking, product benchmarking, innovation, and trend spotting services in the country. Globally, the consumer intelligence platform works with Unilever, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Danone and Clorox, and claims to disrupt traditional survey-based market research by synthesizing consumer insights from billions of search, social, video and review signals using advanced AI. India's industry body, the Market Research Society of India (MRSI), which has both insights and analytics firms and consumer firms among its members, too adopted the international code which considers the increasing use of AI, synthetic and secondary data, and the need for high levels of trust in market research. India was stuck with surveys and group discussion formats in market research for several decades in a data-deficit world. "But today's world is certainly not data deficit. The number of reels and threads posted in a day in India is far greater than the total number of surveys conducted in the country an entire year," Adarkar said. i-Genie processed 71 billion search queries, 5.3 million search keywords, 207 million social posts last month, he added. Shuvadip Banerjee, vice president, MRSI, agreed that after India's initial data drought, followed by data explosion, digital is now moving to intelligence transformation with AI. With rapidly changing consumer habits, consumer insights are also becoming complex. "Right from 5.30 in the morning to 12 midnight, people are searching for things on quick-commerce sites or e-commerce platforms. If brands must win the micro battles, they need to understand search, the time of the day and location," Banerjee said. "Or when a brand appears on, say, the IPL or on Instagram through an influencer, the search volume grows, expanding the area of insight. It is complex as every micro moment is information," Banerjee said. But are consumers truthful on digital media? "If the consumer is leaving a digital footprint today, we must trust it in today's context and time. Sure, the consumer may contradict herself after a month and leave a contradictory digital footprint. So, we must get the context right," said i-Genie's Adarkar. Digital footprints are captured correctly and without bias while surveys are memory and perception based. "Besides, there is so much exposure, and so many product SKUs (stock keeping units), that consumers struggle to recall," he said. Also, consumers don't have the attention spans to participate in surveys lasting 20+ minutes. Today, information and insights are all around us, said MRSI's Banerjee. Brand owners and research firms gather data from social listening, brand websites and even crawlers on the platforms to study consumer behaviour. "But what gets amplified in these posts is consumer needs, apprehensions, and anxieties. So, you end up understanding that better. Can these digital scans help me understand, say, why a particular biscuit brand is not doing well in Haryana versus Delhi? The answer is 'not really'," Banerjee said. "For that I need to observe you, understand your emotions and culture. So, the traditional research methods still hold value. They get complemented by new tech and AI," he added. Digital footprints generate too much and complex information which isn't easy to stitch together. That's where AI comes in, Banerjee said. The most obvious use of AI is to streamline processes, reduce costs and timelines. A much more potent use is to deliver consumer intelligence and insights but with a human in the loop, Adarkar said. The crux is to figure out how to build competitive advantage in an era where everything is accessible to everybody. "The main challenge would be changing our mindset to accept the new reality and adopt an AI-first thinking," he added....