Qual’s superpower

With the rise of Ai in market research, I’m more excited than ever to be on the qualitative side.

Ai will never replace the magic of the human voice, the eye contact, and the connection that comes with physical presence. Real insight comes from deep human truths, and Ai simply can’t get to them without the ability for emotion.

“How can [a machine] effectively communicate information if it doesn’t know your emotional state, if it doesn’t know how you’re feeling, it doesn’t know how you’re going to respond to specific content”

Javier Hernández, research scientist with the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab,

As quallies, the essence of what we do stems from that real, genuine, human connection. The ability to establish trust with a consumer, ask the right questions and pivot to more fruitful ground when needed, and pick up on the subtleties of facial expressions and body language. This is why we’re able to understand humans at deeper levels than surveys - which are entirely self-reported - and from behavioral data, which does not provide the context for why people do what they do.

Only qualitative can dig deep enough to understand the WHYs, and find insights in them that can spark new product, communications and experience ideas for brands.

Now, more than ever, is qual’s time to shine.

Further reading:

https://business.blogthinkbig.com/can-artificial-intelligence-understand-emotions/

https://www.makeuseof.com/reasons-artificial-intelligence-cant-replace-humans/