In today’s fast-paced world of AI-powered dashboards, real-time metrics, and instant feedback loops, businesses are flooded with data. But despite this access to information, many teams are still struggling to truly understand their consumers.
Why? Because understanding doesn’t come from data points alone. It comes from empathy – the ability to see the world through your consumers’ eyes.
Empathy is not just a soft skill. In a business context, empathy for your consumer is a strategic asset. And when used intentionally, it becomes a competitive differentiator that can unlock sharper decisions, faster innovation, and stronger brand resonance.
Empathy in a business context goes beyond surface understanding: It’s the process of cognitively and emotionally connecting with your consumers’ experiences, motivations, and needs.
Consumer empathy allows teams to:
And most importantly: it allows your team to move beyond assumptions and act with confidence.
What we see most notably, with the rise of AI, more and more executive teams are pushing for faster, leaner decision-making. But without a connection to real-world consumer behavior, speed risks becoming shallow, and very costly. From an insights perspective, developing empathy within organizations and training teams isn’t a nice-to-have or a luxury – it’s a necessity.
And these are just some examples. Empathy fuels smarter decisions at every level of the business, in all departments.
Whether you’re a CMO rethinking brand positioning or an Insights Director building your learning plans, here are some key tools to bring empathy into strategy:
Spending time in your consumers’ real environments (their homes, their workplace, neighborhood stores, their daily routines, even in their cars) allows you to uncover insights that would never surface in a focus group or controlled environment. Watch for routines, artifacts, interactions, and decision-making moments. What feels normal to them might be revealing for your team.
Ethnographic interviews are perfect to use when exploring new segments, refining product strategy, or understanding how a category fits into everyday life.
Understanding how people actually make choices at shelf (or online) tells you more than any survey can. What stops them? What persuades them? How do they navigate the retail space? How does your product show up relative to your competitors? Shop-Alongs and Path to Purchase Observations are perfect when optimizing in-store experience, packaging, or online conversion strategy.
These immersive, multi-day learning experiences are designed to help teams step into the shoes of their consumers – literally. Whether it’s joining farmers on their land or shadowing a parent on a morning routine, empathy treks bring brand teams (and senior leaders) closer to the emotional context that drives decisions. It’s a common tool to aligning cross-functional teams, inspiring innovation, or uncovering core brand truths.
Mobile mission software, accessed through smart phones, gives you visibility into your consumers’ world in real time or over time. From what they eat and wear to how they talk about brands, these tools capture lived experiences in context, without disrupting them. Digital diaries are perfect for when businesses are looking to understand rituals, routines, and the evolving emotional process of the consumer journey.
Empathy doesn’t end with the research. In fact, it’s only the beginning, and companies should strive to embed it in their day-to-day businesses. But how? That’s where tools like Insight Activation Sessions come in, to help teams translate empathy into action by reframing findings as strategic questions, idea starters, or business moves. A perfect move to embedding insights into planning cycles or cross-functional decision-making, for long-term results.
At SIVO, we love helping clients across industries uncover powerful insights through empathy-driven methods. Here are just a few examples of past cases:
A leading electronics retailer struggled to connect with their consumers – their messaging felt clinical and cold. By stepping into the real lives of their target market, in their own homes, we uncovered the emotional language that truly resonated. The result? Clear direction on positioning and communication strategies – and a renewed path to success in a challenging category.
A global beverage brand was losing relevance across key consumption occasions. Through immersive virtual ethnography, we helped them see how emotions, rituals, and motivations shaped beverage choice across six countries. This empathy-powered understanding led to sharper messaging and inspired marketing activation across core segments.
An electronics brand expanding globally needed to understand what truly drives consumer decisions – but sales data alone weren’t cutting it. Through ethnographic interviews and in-store observations across multiple countries, we uncovered key journey moments that shaped how and why people buy. The insights directly informed their brand growth strategy.
A recreational vehicle company wanted to identify new opportunities for innovation and product improvement efforts – but needed to understand the deeper feelings associated with their utility vehicles. The SIVO and client team spent quality time with farmers and hunters on their properties, riding in their vehicles to see and feel how these vehicles integrated into their consumers’ lives, their farming businesses, and leisure time.
Empathy isn't just a buzzword or about "feeling good" – it's about making better decisions, for you, your company, and your consumers. When you understand the world your consumers live in, you can make decisions with more clarity, alignment, and confidence.
Ready to move from unaware to empathetic?
Let’s explore how empathy can drive better decisions across your company!
Spoiler alert! It’s people who drive success, not machines.
By Julie Rose
Don’t get us wrong, SIVO is pro-technology! We are all for technology that enables efficiency and effectiveness. Within the insights industry, online surveys, advances in virtual reality, neuroscience, and even webcams (to name a few) have changed how we collect data. Artificial intelligence applications have transformed data analytics, for example, turning massive data sets into insights frameworks, personalized performance tracking dashboards and real-time, micro-targeted digital marketing campaigns. Technology has literally changed how we connect with consumers, identify insights, view the marketplace and essentially, how we manage our business.
And yet, these technologies still require human talent—possessing the sensitivities and critical thinking of the human brain—to use these powerful, innovative tech tools to identify the insights, apply the learning back to the business, drive decision-making and ultimately, help teams achieve sustainable growth.
Let’s consider why talent eclipses tech:
Creativity: Thinking outside the box, coming up with innovative solutions, and understanding nuances give creative thinkers a competitive advantage. While technology can automate and save loads of time, it's limited by what it's been programmed to do.
Emotional Intelligence: Humans are empathetic beings and can be tuned into the emotional nuances of others, such as body language, facial expressions, and culture-specific interpersonal behaviors. While machines can be designed to recognize emotions, they can miss deeper level connections and cannot develop the same strong relationships.
Adaptability: Being flexible and adjusting quickly is necessary in today's changing business environment. Great talent learns new skills quickly, pivots when necessary and is overall more agile than AI, especially when things like emotions, unwritten rules, biases and company politics and culture are part of the equation.
Leadership: While machines provide a plethora of data and insights, it’s the true leaders who synthesize the information, across multiple sources and vantage points, to meet the needs of their organization. They inspire, motivate, and guide their team in ways that are consistent with the company culture, toward success and making the right business decisions.
It is the talent that will leverage technology to take calculated risks, explore the possibilities, identify the insights, and develop the opportunities to move your business forward that would be impossible to do with technology alone. So, start with the right talent, select the right tech tools to support them, and then build a culture of excellence that is difficult for competitors to replicate.
SIVO Fractional Research Capabilities
SIVO On Demand Talent team includes an extensive pool of Fractional Insights Professionals with years of experience and expertise across an array of industries such as CPG, healthcare, finance, technology, apparel and retail. You can rely on SIVO’s team of experts to leverage technology to collect high-quality data, provide an accurate interpretation of that data, and offer guidance on how to best utilize the insights learned. From managing a portion of a research project to full-service research design through insight application, SIVO helps clients make data-driven decisions and identify opportunities for growth.
Please email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or request a discovery call from our website at SIVOInsights.com.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries, and marketing research is no exception. In the field of innovation, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a transformative force. As market researchers strive to speed up timelines, generate breakthrough insights, and stay ahead of consumer trends, AI offers new opportunities. At SIVO, we believe in exploring AI’s strategic potential, balancing excitement with careful consideration of its limitations and practical applications.
AI’s Advantages in the Innovation Process: Speed, Cost, and Quality
AI offers unparalleled efficiency across all phases of innovation. For example, traditional brainstorming sessions might yield a few dozen ideas over several hours, but AI-driven generation tools can produce hundreds of concepts in minutes. Models like ChatGPT can produce ideas 200 times faster than humans, feeding researchers more possibilities and compressing the innovation cycle, enabling faster decision-making.
AI also delivers significant cost savings. Research shows that organizations using AI for innovation can reduce costs by as much as 85% through the automation of “front-end” work streams such as data analysis, ideation, and concept validation. By minimizing the manual labor required, AI allows companies to reallocate resources toward high-value strategic efforts without sacrificing quality.
And it’s not just about speed and cost - AI excels in generating high-quality ideas. Studies suggest that AI-powered ideation rivals, and sometimes surpasses, human creativity. AI isn’t just capable of producing novel ideas but is also highly effective in generating nuanced originality. Furthermore, the emerging field of synthetic testing allows AI to simulate human consumer sentiment, attitudes, and behaviors, enabling iterative, real-time refinement during the ideation phase.
Key Applications for Innovation Insights Work Streams
AI offers powerful tools for businesses throughout the innovation funnel, from discovery to launch. At SIVO, we’re particularly intrigued by AI’s role in the “front end” of innovation and the growing potential of synthetic validation. Key areas include:
AI is reshaping innovation research. Thoughtful adoption of these tools is essential for businesses that want to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.
Challenges and Watchouts:
The Importance of Oversight in AI-Supported Innovation
While AI offers immense potential, it also presents important challenges:
In a field where accuracy and context are critical, these limitations must be accounted for. AI should not replace human creativity and research expertise but should instead serve as a collaborative partner that enhances researchers’ ability to innovate more efficiently and comprehensively.
Strategic Integration of AI for Innovation: A Balanced Approach
To successfully integrate AI into your innovation process, it’s important to narrow your focus. Identify the areas where AI can deliver the most value—whether in trend analysis, ideation, or simulated consumer testing. From there, begin experimenting with AI in those areas to build trust and familiarity.
For those hesitant to fully embrace AI, running parallel testing alongside human-led research can be a great starting point. This approach allows teams to compare AI-generated insights with traditional methods, building confidence in AI’s capabilities while reducing risk. Alternatively, AI can be applied to lower-profile projects first, allowing teams to rehearse its application and refine their approach as they gain experience.
The key is to strike a balance—lean into focused, mindful use of AI to reap its benefits and stay competitive without feeling the need to chase every new use case. AI should be applied where it truly adds value and enhances the innovation process.
SIVO: Your Partner in AI-Enhanced Innovation
At SIVO, we’re actively experimenting with AI tools and exploring AI’s potential to transform how market research supports your new product innovation needs. We see AI as a powerful tool to accelerate processes and enhance creativity, and advocate for a stepwise, cautious approach. We’re eager to guide clients through proof-of-concept tests, blending AI’s scientific power with the art of human-driven insight application, which remains at the core of our work.
If you’re ready to experiment with AI and enhance your innovation process, contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or visit SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call.
Let’s navigate the future together!
Be consumer first. Don’t be consumer only. Powerful words by leading Insights executive, Khary Campbell, VP of Consumer Research & Insights at Comcast.
https://youtu.be/xJSQO7VSw5Q
During a recent SIVO Insights Forum, Khary shared the importance of considering the implications of all functions. After all, every function is working in orchestra of the business.
Click here for a lively on-demand conversation “Bridging The Gap: Translating Insights Into Meaningful Business Results" to hear from Khary and other Insights experts including Eliana Whanon (General Mills, VP of Consumer & Market Insights) and Elizabeth Oates (Book Author, and former Ulta Beauty VP of Consumer Insights.)
Learn from Insights leaders as they discuss:
Thank you to Natasha Weith, VP of Research at SIVO Inc. for hosting The SIVO Insights Forum!
by Cindy Blackstock
At SIVO, our team of insights experts have honed their skills over many years of market research and the lessons gained along the way now prove to be invaluable. We have learned that insights are just useless facts unless they can be applied to the business in a way that drives action among our client teams and growth on their businesses. So, in the spirit of sharing useful content and a bit of our “secret sauce” with our valued clients and partners, here are 5 Keys for Turning Consumer Insights into Action.
Start with the End in Mind
As market researchers in search of consumer insights, the SIVO team must understand how the results will possibly be used, what actions will be taken by our clients and how our clients intend to influence and have impact in their organization using our research. When we are equipped with the business objective and the actions that might stem from the results, we become clear on the research objectives and design. We all know that best consumer insights experts can envision how the research results need to come to life before starting the research. When we do this, we avoid two big pitfalls in research – first, the fatal one, missing a key question and second, the sloppy one, asking questions that don’t need to be answered or are already known.
Conduct a “Get Smart” Session
By facilitating a “Get Smart” Session with the client team, SIVO can mine existing information and surface institutional knowledge. There are 3 key reasons for the session:
Plan for Quality Input to Get Quality Output
It has been said that the quality of the output is only as good as the quality of the input. This is very true when designing market research. SIVO experts start with detailed learning plans to outline how the business objectives translate to the learning objectives and market research approach. This is where we align with the client team by defining things like sample composition and size, key measures, and of course, the action standards. Action standards outline the “if/then” scenarios for research outcomes and the follow-up actions. For example, if the results indicate X, then the action to be taken is Y. Documenting the action standards, before the research is executed, forces both the SIVO and client teams to think through the possible actions for each hypothesized outcome.
Report the Key Findings (and, all the rest too!)
Some client teams want an at-a-glance Executive Summary of results that they can quickly act upon, and others want all the details for a more thorough understanding before taking action. SIVO provides both, either in one report or in two separate deliverables. We must be clear on the delivery of the topline summary versus the full report with the detailed findings (supporting data, quotes, video clips, images, etc.) for future reference.
Make Clear Recommendations
It’s critical to turn data into insights and insights into actions. Too often professionals in the insights industry are hesitant to make bold recommendations on potential actions to take. However, client teams are looking for more than data and insights. They need courageous recommendations that inform their decisions. To drive action, SIVO puts a stake in the ground! It is, however, important to point out that recommendations are an educated opinion or point-of-view, based on the insights and findings of the research. Clients will then use research recommendations, in conjunction with other external factors, to guide or inform their actions and decisions. The best way to be confident about the recommendations is to circle back to Step 1! Start with the end in mind!
Contact the SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or reach out to me directly at Cindy.Blackstock@SIVOInsights.com to help you uncover insights that inform your future decisions and actions!
SIVO Insights brings together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence. Have a business challenge? Let's talk!
We bring together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence
