Are your insights keeping up
with the new AI-powered consumer?
Insights at Merkle
StartEvery generation of technology has changed consumers. The web gave them information. Social gave them voice. Mobile gave them immediacy. Commerce gave them convenience. Each wave raised the bar for brands, and the best ones adapted. AI is a different kind of change entirely.
The AI-poweredConsumers now research, evaluate and decide with personalized, synthesized guidance from AI assistants. They move in rapid loops across channels, influenced by peers and culture in real time. This shift rewrites what consumers expect in every brand interaction.
Loyalty isWhen customers feel genuinely understood, when their values are reflected and their needs anticipated, loyalty deepens beyond repeat purchase. Advocacy compounds, and brands earn social currency, trust and goodwill no media budget can manufacture.
The real opportunity is not just managing this complexity. It is using the same engine driving consumer change to move with them and get ahead of them.
Modernization didn't anticipate the GenAI revolution
Consumers are now forming preferences and making decisions inside AI-mediated environments
Those environments generate signals traditional measurement was never designed to capture
Surveys moved online
Dashboards became interactive
Automation shortened the time from fieldwork to findings
Research became faster, cheaper, and more accessible
Traditional marketStated preferences, declared behaviors, and the moments brands choose to measure. Surveys, focus groups and dashboards give a structured, comparable view of customers - but only on the dimensions teams have always measured.
ButThe signals AI generates as consumers research, evaluate and decide inside AI-mediated environments - the invisible layer where preference is now being formed, long before a brand has a chance to measure it.
"We have more data than ever, but less clarity than we need." A common refrain from marketing leaders; not a complaint about tools, but recognition that the game has changed.
Use the same engine consumers use, only better:
If consumers research and decide through AI,
brands need AI to understand (and compete in)
that environment.
Merkle's Generative Intelligence Engine does exactly that. Instead of waiting to ask consumers, it queries AI models the way consumers do and converts responses into structured, queryable data: what an LLM says about your category, which attributes it cites, and whether your brand is present, missing or misrepresented. This intelligence is captured at scale by geography and audience segment on a continuous cadence and delivered to your data environment as rows and columns ready for analysis.
Primary research remains the gold standard for attitudes, motivations, and recall. What changes is the mix: new AI-derived signals, integrated with your existing sources and activated faster and more effectively.
Path toAI assistants now sit between consumers and brand channels - synthesizing, comparing and recommending. Mapping the journey requires signals from inside that AI layer, not just from owned touchpoints.
Segmentation
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How consumers use, trust and rely on AI is now a meaningful dimension on top of demographics and behavior. AI-native overlays sharpen targeting and reveal the segments that compound advantage.
DigitalUX research must now account for journeys that pass through AI before reaching a brand. The stakes of a poor AI-mediated experience compound quickly - a single bad answer becomes the brand impression.
BrandTracking must now detect what AI systems say about your brand - continuously, and between survey waves. The brand that monitors this layer wins long before the quarterly tracker ever catches up.
The barriers are structural.
So is the solution.
Most organizations that attempt this transformation with existing resources and good intentions find themselves in pilot purgatory: progress visible, scale elusive. The barriers are not motivational. They are architectural.
Source: Merkle 2025 CTO Navigator Survey
The fastest wins come from intelligence you already produce but don't use - research, CX, behavioral, and ignored signals waiting to connect.
Identify the decisions that matter most - then define the intelligence needed to improve them before choosing tools.
AI layered onto old workflows creates efficiency. Re-engineering the workflow creates the transformation.
Governance, explainability, and clear limits turn fast insight into dependable insight people will actually act on.
Strategic synthesis for leaders. Real-time signals for teams. Conversational access for anyone with a smart question.
Loyalty, advocacy and
a competitive moat that compounds
The brands that close the intelligence gap don't just avoid the risk of incomplete insight. They earn something their competitors cannot easily replicate: a genuine, current understanding of their customers that improves continuously - and that consumers feel.
Data, Technology and Market Research Expertise in One Organization
Most organizations trying to close this gap run into the same constraint. They're forced to choose between a market research firm learning AI, or a technology provider learning research. In practice, neither works because the challenge isn't tactical. It's architectural.
Merkle is a data and technology company with professional-grade market research practice. It is not a research firm extending into data and AI and not a technology provider that has bolted on survey capability. That distinction matters precisely because the problem is structural. Solving it requires genuine depth across all three dimensions simultaneously: methodological rigor, data infrastructure, and AI at enterprise scale.
If this resonates, let's start with a conversation about where your organization is today and where the highest-value opportunities are.
Market Research at Merkle combines the methodological depth of a professional research practice with Merkle's heritage in data science, technology, and AI. We help enterprise organizations close the gap between customer intelligence and customer reality through connected data, continuous insight, and professional-grade capability built for the complexity of modern business.
