IN TUNE WITH INSIGHTS
For Stephan Gans, the question is, to what extent are you able to inspire, enable, and optimize the business?
There is a large contingent within survey respondents who seem to continue to have quite a traditional take on the consumer insights profession. To put it bluntly, that of an order taker who is trying to do her or his work as efficiently as possible, not somebody who’s actually aspiring to impact the business. During the pandemic , professionally everybody was quite inward focused and trying to figure out what all of this was going to mean. Coming out of the pandemic, a lot is “business as usual.” There’s a sense of relief. I think that ‘take’ on the role is outdated and not fit for purpose with or without a pandemic, with or without accelerating change, and with or without conversational AI.
Consumer insights can no longer afford to be the order taker. That’s just not good enough. A lot of consumer product categories have come out of the pandemic in growth mode. And there’s a sense of momentum that you can capture with the right type of development and innovation. There’s a sense of opportunity. We need to maintain the growth momentum that we’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years. In terms of strengths , “expanding influence on the business,” will be different based on the industry of the respondent. “Influence,” means a whole different thing even for somebody who works in CPG
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INSIGHTS SPEND & TRENDS REPORT 2023
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