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Table of Contents

1. What Are Consumer Insights?
2. How Do AI Consumer Insights Help Businesses?
3. AI Powered Consumer Insights
4. Consumer Insights: Use Cases
5. Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT ARE CONSUMER INSIGHTS?

Imagine gaining an insight into your consumer’s mind, where you are able to explore their thought patterns, decision-making process, and preferences, in order to deliver customer experiences catered to their needs – this is exactly what Consumer Insights do.
By harnessing the power of AI Consumer Insights, retail brands can simplify every single consumer that visits their store or website into a robust profile, one that includes everything about their buying journey, perceptions, sentiments, their approximate lifetime value, and spending power.
By gauging what consumers think of your brand, and how they perceive your products, you as a retail brand can focus on delivering products and services that meet consumer needs and expectations accurately.

This information is crucial in the discovery of areas of improvement, bettering marketing strategies and advertisements, creating a successful sales funnel, and being able to predict future retail consumer trends based on historical data and insights collected.

Consumer Insights are therefore imperative for high-quality retail experiences and allow retailers the ability to stay ahead of their competitors, thanks to a 360-degree view of exactly what their consumers want.
Here are a few of the different steps AskSid employs while gathering and analyzing retail consumer insights:
  • Data assimilation: Every single retail brand out there is sitting on a mountain of consumer data, from their interactions, emails, feedback, social media channels, reviews, and what not! The magic happens when you meet a conversational AI provider that knows what to do with your precious data. Collection, segregation, and organization of data are top priorities for us at AskSid, which helps in the creation of a solid knowledge-led foundation that keeps evolving and growing, but whose management is completely automated by AskSid’s AI models.
  • AI-driven analytics: The next step is taking all the collected data and putting it through rigorous AI analytical models built for the retail sector that help make sense of the data and translate it into actionable insights that can help the brand find patterns and key areas in which consumers are satisfied, where they can do better, where opportunities lie, why some marketing campaigns work and some don’t, and much more.
  • Report generation: Insights gathered via the process of analytical study of the data are then put to use, and for that having an AI provider like AskSid that has spent years on studying retail consumer patterns and preferences to develop a great level of domain expertise, who breaks down the insights into actionable items of implementation for the brand. This can be done only by business analysis that is founded on domain expertise. AskSid for instance does not just work towards building the most sophisticated conversational AI assistants for retail brands but also works behind the scenes to deliver action points for brands as to which areas need more of a strategic business approach.

HOW DO AI CONSUMER INSIGHTS HELP BUSINESSES?

Future-proofing of your business is always a top strategic priority, and gaining a transparent understanding of your consumer’s needs allows you to work smart and deliver better retail experiences. It’s simple, think of consumer insights as having very honed good listening skills, making you a brand that cares about unmet consumer needs and where they aren’t being met.

Conversational AI providers like AskSid collect millions of consumer insights from every single conversation that occurs on a brand’s digital and web channels. Not only does this provide a comprehensive database to analyze, but provokes conversations about what is lacking, what can be improved upon, and what needs to be done to deliver exceptional shopping experiences, rather than just the ordinary.

Marketing teams and Customer Support teams in specific are highly reliant on this data to be accurate and timely so that they can do more than just keep tabs on their consumers, they can jump in to proactively help whenever needed.
Here are some of the top business benefits retail brands can gain from consumer insights:
  • Transform the way you engage with consumers: Consumer insights act like the blueprint you need to improve how you engage with your consumers. Understand which preferred channels, formats of communication, or types of support consumers are responsive to and strategize to stay ahead of the game
  • Well-designed user flow journeys: Consumer insights can also be useful in helping brands and AI providers tweak or improve their already existing customer journeys, right from when they land on to the channel till checkout.
  • Discover previously unknown business opportunities: Unique AI consumer insights provide clear direction to retail brands in terms of pointing them towards new business opportunities like expansion, new product lines, a different approach to marketing and promotions, to ultimately get closer to what consumers want.
  • Save on costs: Digital assistants continually learn and improve based on insights collected and can manage to automate a large portion of the customer support function for brands, leading to lower resource expenditure over time. In addition, insights also reduce dependencies on expensive market research, while also carrying the value of being a lot more accurate and dependable, leading to successful marketing campaigns at a fraction of the market research cost.
  • Keep an eye on your competitors: To become a resilient force in an ever-changing world such as retail, understanding your competitors and knowing exactly where you stand in the pecking order is extremely important. AI consumer insights deliver on exactly this by acting like your ears and eyes while tapping into consumer perceptions, sentiments, and how they engage with your brand versus others. Creating strategies is great, but having a solid understanding of who you are and in what environment you function is imperative to your brand value. Consumer insights help you gauge what your competitors are doing and more importantly what they are lacking, giving you a free and clear passage to offer your customers the right product or support at the right time!
  • Track every step of your consumer’s journey: To deliver frictionless shopping journeys, brands need to be able to identify issues and hurdles in their existing user flow journey. This is where consumer insights come to use! Not only do they tell you in great detail which products, categories, or pages are most popular, they also present challenges faced by consumers, allowing them to eliminate the same and iterate regularly to keep the online experience truly seamless.
  • Change your marketing strategies: Research states that personalization in marketing can lead to an increase of 39% in revenue for a single product category, and this is representative of the very real shift marketing campaigns have seen off late. An investment in smart AI and gathering consumer marketing insights have the potential to provide your retail brand with higher conversions through leveraging the interests and preferences of your consumers. Given that consumer marketing insights are much more reliable than market research, as they are derived from your target audience, it allows you as a retailer to effectively push personalization sensibly via marketing and communication campaigns and gain profits simultaneously.
  • Exceptional customer support 24/7: With consumer insights at your customer support team’s disposal, you are on track to optimize your customer support to a whole new level! Judge what’s working and what isn’t, continually iterate to stay one step ahead of your consumers, and strategically align with their needs and preferences. Insights also allow your digital assistant to get a smarter and better understanding of consumers and their intents and sentiments, leading to support that helps shoppers find easy resolutions.
  • Develop rewards & loyalty programs: Rewards & Loyalty programs are a big part of how retail brands retain loyal customers and acknowledge their role in the success of the brand. Consumer insights allow a transparent view on high-value consumers and what is common among the group, allowing brands to promote the same with similar categories of consumers to widen their potential demographic via drip-feed campaigns.
  • Improve your offering: Are your consumers truly satisfied with the quality or output of your products? Is there scope to improve on existing products? Are there new product segments to explore? Discover related products and ranges that you can capitalize on to boost your bottom line with consumer insights.
  • Boost customer satisfaction: One of the most pivotal benefits a retail brand can gain out of consumer insights is a sure shot way to make necessary changes based on inputs received to improve the overall experience offered. This leads to enhanced customer satisfaction scores (CSAT and NPS) that in turn, will result in increased revenue for your retail brand.

AI POWERED CONSUMER INSIGHTS

Gain comprehensive micro-level knowledge on what your consumers want with insights that are put through rigorous levels of analytics to identify the desires, needs, and motivations of your high-value consumers. The impact of insights cannot be understated – they truly do help brands transform customer experiences and sales. But how do insights work? With AI, of course!
AI powered consumer insights are demand signals that are gathered using AI and Machine Learning models and analyzed using AI analytical models to arrive at a blueprint of your consumer’s needs and requirements. AI powered insights are automated and take away the stress of research, assessment, and analysis from marketing teams, allowing them to access the final results and re-focus their valuable time to strategize on ways to use these insights to deliver better outcomes.
Some examples of answers AI powered consumer insights could help brands with include:
  • Which product category or section has the longest sessions?
  • Which categories or individual products do consumers engage the most with?
  • Why are consumers not completing their purchasing journey?
  • How are your consumers reacting to pricing?
  • Are the discounts, sales, and promotions working?

CONSUMER INSIGHTS: USE CASES

  • Sales: Get a first-hand look at what factors come into play for a consumer to decide on purchasing on your eCommerce site, what promotions are most popular, which discounts codes are frequently redeemed, the periods where most sales occur, and so on.
  • Product data: Not all products you develop and retail would hit the mark with consumers and by leveraging insights, your product development team gets transparent feedback on what can be improved for certain products, leading to better conversions and sales for the brand.
  • Direct consumer feedback: Never before have brands been able to create a direct feedback loop with consumers, and with insights available, brands can easily measure customer satisfaction levels.
  • Demographics: Access accurate insights on your consumers based on factors like location, age, gender, purchasing power, among others.
  • Consumer sentiments: Consumers have very strong preferences and interests and being able to predict these would be key in delivering exactly what they are looking for.

FUTURE OF CONSUMER INSIGHTS

As AI and its allied technologies advance, so do the capabilities to transform the future of retail. Data as is predicted will be front and center in terms of business strategies, and insights will be a big part of making sense of collected data.

Consumer insights convert raw data into a solid direction for brands to move in, to get closer to perfecting customer experiences. All the steps and actions required to improve on existing processes, online shopping journeys, the way products are presented online, marketing campaigns, and even the quality of customer support on offer, are made available to those ready to invest in consumer insights driven by AI.

And currently, with brands pushing omnichannel support and shopping, it becomes even more crucial to track customer sentiments and response to everything the brand is offering. Collating, analyzing, and arriving at actionable insights being automated is a big win for any retail brand looking to improve its business holistically.
Because this process is automated, brands can now reallocate resources to higher-value tasks such as reviewing insights and understanding what changes need to be made. The way that consumer insights have been changing the way some of the world’s biggest brands approach various aspects of the retail process, the future of consumer insights looks extremely positive. By collecting AI powered insights, brands are now entering a new era where strong businesses are built on a foundation of data and knowledge, and the only way to go for them is up!

Here are a few examples of consumer insights:

  • Firmographic data
  • Usage information
  • consumer loyalty information
  • Consumer service data
  • Competitor analysis
  • Socio-demographic data
  • Brand perception
  • Market research
  • Trends analysis
  • consumer surveys
Consumer insights involve gaining an understanding of shoppers by harnessing consumer data that factors behaviors, traits, experiences, and feedback to create a living and breathing ecosystem driven towards the improvement of the product or service. In simpler words, consumer insights are the window to what a consumer thinks or feels about a business.
Insights that are drawn out using AI models that segregate consumer data into a set of variables and characteristics that allow businesses to answer questions surrounding ideal consumer profile, target audiences, buyer’s journey, patterns, perception, consumer sentiment, and consumer lifetime value.
A consumer insights platform helps maximize consumer lifetime value by anticipating their needs and allowing businesses to adapt to these and deliver richer consumer experiences.