How to Use AI in Market Research and Increase Sales (2024)

The days of manually sorting through reviews, consumer data, and market trends may be coming to an end, thanks to AI market research tools. Typically, companies rely on dedicated teams for market research; today, they can outsource some of that work to powerful, intelligent applications.

If you run an e-commerce business, it’s worth exploring how AI can increase efficiency and improve market research. Here’s what market research is, how to use AI market research tools, and the best AI platforms to help you get started.

What is market research?

Market research is an umbrella term for the data collection and analysis that businesses undertake to understand the competitive landscape, market trends, and customer sentiment. You can conduct market research through surveys, competitor analysis, focus groups, interviews, etc. The goal is to gain valuable insights into customer preferences in order to make data-driven decisions that improve competitiveness.

If your sportswear company is launching a new running shoe, market research can provide a better understanding of your target demographic. How do they work? What do they like and dislike in a shoe? What type of marketing are they interested in? How does your product stand up to the competition? With this data, you can make informed decisions about shoe marketing, colorways, and functionality, positioning your product for more sales.

4 Ways to Use AI in Market Research

1. Crisp data
2. Identify consumer sentiment
3. Adapt marketing efforts
4. Save time and money

Ecommerce business owners have a lot of plates to play. Take some of the tedious work out of market research by streamlining the process with AI technology. Here are practical ways to use AI tools:

1. Analyze the data

Most of the market research process involves collecting complex data and organizing it for easy analysis. While traditional methods of collecting large amounts of data are often very tedious, the speed at which AI can aggregate data is almost instantaneous. You can use AI to organize existing internal data, like employee surveys, or leverage AI tools to find external data, like keywords for search engine optimizationdepending on your needs.

For example, Pencilan AI tool for competitive analysis, compares a user’s data to information from competing websites, social media and job postings, information that would be difficult and time-consuming to collect manually.

2. Identify consumer sentiment

AI-driven natural language processing can sift through customer service comments, reviews, and discussions on social media to gauge sentiment toward your product or service. These consumer insights provide a clear view of your target audience’s perceptions, helping you understand what’s working and what you can improve.

For example, Overview7 is an AI tool that analyzes videos, calls and interviews to capture consumer sentiment, revealing pain points, desires and behaviors to inform customer experience workflows and product improvements.

3. Adapt marketing efforts

Using customer data, consumer behavior, and predictive analytics, AI tools provide marketing teams with deeper insights to create effective advertisements and promotions. You can tailor marketing strategies to specific trends and customer preferences that would be difficult to identify without AI.

For example, the market research tool Quantilope uses surveys for automated A/B testing, a comparison tactic that collects key information across multiple ads or products, revealing which ads may resonate with your audience and which products are likely to sell.

4. Save time and money

Whether you need to generate ideas, speed up the research process, or streamline data extraction, AI can organize and analyze data much faster than human workers, thanks to its near-instant processing speed . For example, with a database of Net Promoter Score survey results, AI can organize data into graphs and suggest actionable steps in seconds.

This efficiency can allow you to work with a smaller team, reduce payroll, or reallocate your workforce and resources to higher-level tasks such as marketing strategies.

Best AI Market Research Tools

AI-powered market research tools offer a wide range of applications, but which platform is right for you? Here are the main tools, each with unique market research capabilities:

Overview7

Overview7 is a market research tool that stands out for its user-friendly interface. It analyzes consumer feedback from calls, videos and interviews, providing detailed sentiment analysis, actionable recommendations and data segmentation. It also integrates with Google and Microsoft apps to automatically scan video calls and internal documents.

Price: THE Startup levelat $19 per month, covers one user with access to the app’s main features. For multiple users and in-depth data analysis, consider the Business tier at $299 per month.

ChatGPT

Large, well-known language model ChatGPT is a powerful tool for searching qualitative data such as interview transcripts and survey responses, performing complex data analysis, and analyzing customer reviews and social media posts to gauge consumer sentiment. You can also use it to create buyer personas to narrow down your target audience for marketing.

Price: Explore ChatGPT with the free version. For data analysis and workplace management, consider the Team tier at $25 per user per month, billed annually.

Quantilope

Quantilope accelerates research processes and saves time for small teams with its automation features offering real-time data monitoring, generating tables and charts, and creating tailored surveys. Quantilope includes 15 pre-programmed research methods that classify data into pricing, competitive analysis and ad tracking.

Price: Quantilope does not list its prices online, but you can contact us to request a demo and a personalized package for your business.

Pencil

If you want key information about your competitors, Pencil is the all-in-one competitive intelligence platform. It collects data from competitor websites, job postings, customer reviews and social media posts, automatically reporting price changes. Crayon also lets you create “battle maps” to compare yourself to key competitors, highlighting differentiators that can help you dominate your market.

Price: Crayon bases its plans on the workforce and specific needs of your business. Contact their team for a demo version and pricing options.

Semrush Market Explorer

Semrush Market Explorer used to analyze your market. It provides information on market share and size, direct competitors, audience demographics, and customer behavior. For SEO, it offers keyword tracking and performance metrics to help you use the right terms for better search visibility.

Price: Small teams can benefit from Pro plan at $140 per month, offering five projects, 500 trackable keywords and 10,000 results per report. Mid-sized businesses can choose the Guru plan at $250 per month for 15 projects, 1,500 keywords and 30,000 results per report.

Pecans

Pecans is designed to analyze market trends and forecast trends so you can make your next decision with confidence. Ideal for predicting product demands, assessing consumer volume and anticipating return on investment When it comes to marketing campaigns, Pecan stands out for its seamless integration with Salesforce customer relationship management software, Amazon S3 storage service and Oracle technology products.

Price: Pecan provides a Startup level at $950 per month with 250,000 predictions and 20 trained models, and a Business tier at $1,750 per month with 600,000 predictions and 40 trained models.