Emerging trends

in Business
research
Artificial Intelligence Will Dominate the Consumer Engagement

• Amazon's Echo, Google Home, and other chat bots

have successfully created a wave of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in our daily lives. The Internet is the
new hangout for most consumers today. Hence,
companies are making the most of this wave to sell
online. According to David Sackman, CEO of
Lieberman Research Worldwide, in the years to
come, AI will ease the task of field engagement,
survey, and questionnaire development.
• Data scientists are going to play a crucial role
for enterprises as they gather a specific
amount of data on consumer behavior
patterns and preferences to understand the
behavior of their customers better
• AI will significantly aid in market analysis but it
will be a challenging task to eliminate
traditional research methods altogether
• Traditional methods such as surveys and
qualitative research will continue to be a
crucial part of market research activities
 Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine
intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in
contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and
other animals. Computer science defines AI research as the
study of “intelligent agents": any device that perceives its
environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of
successfully achieving its goals. Artificial intelligence could be
defined as “a system’s ability to correctly interpret external
data, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to
achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation”. 
The term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine
mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other
human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".
Artificial intelligence could be classified into three
different types of AI systems:
Analytical, human-inspired, and humanized artificial
intelligence. Analytical, AI has only characteristics
consistent with cognitive intelligence generating
cognitive representation of the world and using
learning based on past experience to inform future
decisions. Human-inspired AI has elements from
cognitive as well as emotional intelligence,
understanding, in addition to cognitive elements, also
human emotions considering them in their decision
making. Humanized AI shows characteristics of all
types of competencies (i.e., cognitive, emotional,
and social intelligence), able to be self-
conscious and self-aware in interactions with others.
• The traditional problems (or goals) of AI research
include reasoning, knowledge
representation, planning, learning, natural language
processing, perception and the ability to move and
manipulate objects. General intelligence is among the
field's long-term goals. Approaches include statistical
methods, computational intelligence, and traditional
symbolic AI. Many tools are used in AI, including
versions of search and mathematical
optimization, artificial neural networks, and methods
based on statistics, probability and economics. The AI
field draws upon computer science, information
engineering, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philos
ophy, and many others.
 Automation Will be on the Rise
• It is a no-brainer that automation leads to higher
productivity and also helps to save time. This is one
of the reasons why some companies use VBA in MS
Excel. Machines are being used to automate the
multiple processes in the marketing segment.
Collecting as well as processing data is a tedious task,
especially when you have large volumes of data to
crunch. Automation helps to increase the accuracy of
the same while speeding up the process. It also helps
to ease out the process of ad testing while human
researchers are busy analyzing the results.
• Automation will continue to prove to be a
boon for consumer data collection where you
can provide consumers with one-click forms
and wait for the data to arrive

• It may look less influential but over a period of

time automation is going to be extremely
impactful in market research
 Emotional Advertising Will Rule the Roost
• Instead of taking the mechanical path to market
products and services where you are just promoting a
product in a video or through creative visuals, making
an ad which depicts emotions of people, will lead to
effective brand communication. Companies will
produce emotion-based ads to connect with their
target audience, as the accessibility to ads will not
just be restricted to a few sets of audiences.
Businesses will use multiple forms of emotion in their
ads. Gaining mastery into pulling the right plug of
emotion towards audiences is what companies will
aim for because boring ads are out of fashion now.
Blockchain for Marketing Will Gain
Popularity
 What is Blockchain Technology?

• “The blockchain is an incorruptible digital

ledger of economic transactions that can be
programmed to record not just financial
transactions but virtually everything of value.”
• Picture a spreadsheet that is duplicated thousands
of times across a network of computers. Then
imagine that this network is designed to regularly
update this spreadsheet and you have a basic
understanding of the blockchain.
• Information held on a blockchain exists as a shared
— and continually reconciled — database. This is a
way of using the network that has obvious benefits.
The blockchain database isn’t stored in any single
location, meaning the records it keeps are truly
public and easily verifiable. No centralized version
of this information exists for a hacker to corrupt.
 Blockchain as Google Docs
• “The traditional way of sharing documents with collaboration is
to send a Microsoft Word document to another recipient, and ask
them to make revisions to it. The problem with that scenario is
that you need to wait until receiving a return copy before you can
see or make other changes because you are locked out of editing
it until the other person is done with it. That’s how databases
work today. Two owners can’t be messing with the same record
at once. That’s how banks maintain money balances and
transfers; they briefly lock access (or decrease the balance) while
they make a transfer, then update the other side, then re-open
access (or update again).With Google Docs (or Google Sheets),
both parties have access to the same document at the same
time, and the single version of that document is always visible to
both of them. It is like a shared ledger, but it is a shared
document. The distributed part comes into play when sharing
involves a number of people.
• That’s how banks maintain money balances and
transfers; they briefly lock access (or decrease the
balance) while they make a transfer, then update
the other side, then re-open access (or update
again).With Google Docs (or Google Sheets), both
parties have access to the same document at the
same time, and the single version of that
document is always visible to both of them. It is
like a shared ledger, but it is a shared document.
The distributed part comes into play when sharing
involves a number of people.
• Blockchain has made it to the list of market
research industry trends in 2018. Of late there has
been an emergence of companies providing market
research through blockchain. While the market has
witnessed blockchain in its financial form, the era
has arrived when blockchain will start expanding
into different verticals of global markets. If the
advocates of blockchains are to be believed, then
blockchain is going to be the biggest turnaround
technology for consumer surveys.
• Blockchain will reduce the risk of fraudulent surveys
because of immutable records and new ID
verification
• It may also make it easy to pay research participants
through blockchain enabled currency
• In case of multiple similar surveys over long periods
of time, it will be easy to locate the participants of
the earlier surveys through the blockchain
• Blockchain will help companies distribute their
content in a way that will ensure fairness in
payment, security and trust to contributors, writers,
editors, and consumers alike