The ‘Art of Science and Innovation’ — ESOMAR event key takeaways

Earlier this week, 16-18 June, ESOMAR hosted its conference, The Art of Science and Innovation, in Chicago, Illinois. ESOMAR is a non-profit membership organization that explores key insights, analytics and research topics. The key themes of the conference were ongoing innovations such as AI and actionable analytics.

The conference highlights were the presentations from various researchers, academics and other organizations on the latest developments in (generative) AI, as well as different market research methods. Companies that presented included Tik Tok, Instacart, Proctor & Gamble, LinkedIn, Mill, La-Z-Boy, Warner Bros Discovery, and many more.

Below are some key observations from the various presentations:

• Daniella Gold of Accenture’s ?What If! Innovation group and Ipsita Ghosh of Kimberly-Clark spoke about generative AI and the importance of having unbiased data sources before a genAI implementation.
  • They mentioned that the cutoff date for genAI to have external data is the day it is imported into a company’s closed environment, so it is important to continue to leverage external sources for up-to-date information.
  • They stressed the importance of structured, refined and iterative prompting while cautioning that genAI is not a silver bullet solution.
• Adrian Terron of Tata Group believes that we could be heading not toward mass use of LLMs, but small language models that are specific to each company.
• Ray Poynter of ESOMAR shared his two standard questions for analyzing focus group/research question responses: what are the main points of agreement, and what are the main points of disagreement/dissonance.
  • He also stressed the importance of iterative prompting, but with the caveat that due to the developing nature of AI, he still quickly reads the raw responses before the AI analysis.
  • He also asks the AI to provide direct quotes/supporting evidence and checks to make sure the quotes/evidence are real for another layer of assurance.
• Charles Allison of Instacart displayed how tweaking qualitative surveys to mimic conversational interactions yields better results (e.g., instead of “Why don’t you use Instacart?” ask “If Instacart had [data point you’re testing], would you be more likely to use it?”).
• Damian Loscher of Ipsos shared data that suggests corporations are far more excited and optimistic about AI than everyday citizens.
• Jorge Calvachi of La-Z-Boy argued that psychographics are far more important than demographics when identifying potential customers.
• Jared Feldman of Canvs AI and Dr. Michelle Niedziela of HCD Research each demonstrated (in separate presentations) the importance of Daniel Kahneman’s work on behavioral psychology and its business applications.
• Kay Firth-Butterfield of Good Tech Advisory spoke about many long-term concerns with AI, including that the underlying data/feedback informing many of the models is very biased inherently (46% of all global ChatGPT users are white American men) and is not representative of the true global population.
  • Her presentation, while acknowledging AI’s massive potential, touched on the many unanswered questions that must be raised with respect to AI development.
  • She argued that perhaps the best approach is augmentation — a combination of AI and human work — instead of viewing AI as something that should replace human work.

While ESOMAR’s conference is not procurement-oriented, which is different from many of the events we cover, there are still plenty of good reasons why our readers might consider attending its future conferences.

Firstly, the AI insights are very interesting and are relevant to any organization that is developing or implementing an AI strategy. Secondly, the insights on research methods are applicable to many in procurement. For instance, those working at vendors should always be researching new forms of gauging customer satisfaction, and many of the presentations at the conference outlined emerging research methods. Moreover, practitioners who run sourcing events could also benefit from some of the research and negotiation innovations that were shared. The amount of expertise on these topics, including AI, was palpable and could serve as an advantage for any business.

For more information, visit ESOMAR’s website.