How To Use AI in Market Research and Boost Sales (2024) – Shopify

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, businesses rely on dedicated teams for in-market research; today, they can outsource some of this work to powerful, intelligent apps.

If you run an ecommerce business, it’s worth exploring how AI can boost efficiency and enhance market research. Here’s what market research is, how to use AI market research tools, and the top AI platforms to get you started.

What is market research?

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

If your athletic wear company is launching a new running shoe, market research might provide a deeper understanding of your target demographic. How do they run? What do they like and dislike in a shoe? What type of marketing resonates with them? How does your product stand up to the competition? With this data, you can make informed decisions about marketing, colorways, and the shoe’s functionality, positioning your product for more sales.

4 ways to use AI in market research

1. Crunch data
2. Identify consumer sentiment
3. Tailor marketing efforts
4. Save time and money

Ecommerce business owners have many plates to spin. Alleviate some of the heavy lifting of market research by streamlining the process with AI technology. Here are practical ways to use AI tools:

1. Crunch data

Most of the market research process involves gathering complex data and organizing it for easy analysis. Whereas traditional methods for collecting vast amounts of data are often very tedious, the rate at which AI can aggregate data is near 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 optimization, depending on your needs.

For instance, Crayon, an AI tool for competitive analysis, compares a user’s data to information from competitor websites, social media, and job postings—insights that would be challenging and time-consuming to gather manually.

2. Identify consumer sentiment

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

For example, Insight7 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. Tailor marketing efforts

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

For example, the market research tool Quantilope uses surveys for automated A/B testing, a comparison tactic that collects key information about 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 far faster than human workers, thanks to its near instantaneous 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 leaner team, reduce payroll, or reallocate your workforce and resources to high-level tasks like marketing strategies.

Top AI market research tools

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

Insight7

Insight7 is a market research tool that stands out for its user-friendly interface. It analyzes consumer feedback from calls, videos, and interviews, delivering detailed sentiment analysis, actionable recommendations, and data segmentation. It also integrates with Google and Microsoft apps to automatically analyze internal video calls and documents.

Pricing: The Starter tier, at $19 a month, covers one user with access to the app’s main features. For multiple users and extensive data analysis, consider the Business tier at $299 a month.

ChatGPT

Well-known large language model ChatGPT is a powerful tool for sourcing qualitative data like interview transcripts and survey answers, performing complex data analysis, and parsing customer feedback and social media posts to gauge consumer sentiment. You can also use it to create buyer personas to refine your target audience for marketing.

Pricing: 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 smaller teams with its automation features offering real-time data monitoring, chart and graph generation, and tailored survey creation. Quantilope includes 15 pre-programmed research methods that categorize data into pricing, competitive analysis, and ad tracking.

Pricing: Quantilope doesn’t list its pricing online, but you can reach out to request a demo and a customized package for your business.

Crayon

If you want key insights on your competition, Crayon is the all-in-one platform for competitive intelligence. It collects data from competitor websites, job postings, customer reviews, and social media posts, automatically flagging price changes. Crayon also lets you create “battlecards” to compare yourself with top competitors, highlighting differentiators that can help you lead your market.

Pricing: Crayon bases packages on your business’s headcount and specific needs. Contact its team for a demo version and pricing options.

Semrush Market Explorer

Semrush Market Explorer is for analyzing your market. It provides insights 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.

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

Pecan

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

Pricing: Pecan offers a Starter tier at $950 a month with 250,000 predictions and 20 trained models, and a Business tier at $1,750 a month with 600,000 predictions and 40 trained models.