Of course, while it’s quite a subjective question, it’s relevant as the community finds its footing with AI transforming many research operations today. As always, special thanks to the TMRE speakers who participated in our survey. We would like to thank all the speakers attending TMRE 2026 this year, and we look forward to hearing about their own market research best practices, tools, tips, and tactics as the community adapts to the next era of insights.
Keeping Close to the Consumer
What’s the most effective but underused market research tactic? Why?
“I think the most underused market research tactic is spending more time defining the decision before designing the research. Too often, organizations jump straight to methodology instead of asking, ‘What decision are we trying to improve, and what evidence would actually change that decision?’
Through MSI, we see that the hardest problems are rarely caused by a lack of data. They’re caused by asking the wrong question or collecting evidence that isn’t aligned with the decision at hand. As AI makes it easier to generate analyses and summarize information, the value of careful problem framing only increases.
Great research doesn’t just answer questions. It ensures the organization is asking the right ones. That may not be the most visible part of the research process, but it’s often where the greatest value is created.” —Keith Smith, Managing Director, Marketing Science Institute
“Tell me more about that… we don’t always probe as often or as effectively as we can benefit from.” —Raina Rusnak, Head of Consumer Insights, StarKist
“Ethnographies. They are insightful. Powerful. I am afraid we will see less and less of these given that research has gone online.” —Jacob Beniflah, Executive Director, Center for Multicultural Science
“Digital Twin Shadowing via Unsolicited Product Support Loops. While most brands over-rely on highly manicured focus groups or self-reported survey data, they completely ignore the richest repository of unfiltered consumer friction: third-party, peer-to-peer troubleshooting forums (like Reddit, specialized Discord servers, or niche sub-communities). Consumers in focus groups suffer from observer bias and mask their true behavior; however, when they are frustrated and turning to a digital community for help with a competitor’s product, they reveal their exact psychological friction points and unvarnished workarounds in real time.
By scraping and mapping these organic, high-intent troubleshooting threads into an AI-powered semantic analysis layer, market researchers capture raw, behavioral data that traditional research instruments miss entirely. This tactic is incredibly powerful because it isolates the exact delta between what a product promises to do and where the consumer’s real-world execution fails. Tracking these unsolicited pain points allows you to map competitor product vulnerabilities, intercept frustrated users with highly precise counter-positioning, and de-risk your own product roadmap based on real, unprompted market frustration rather than polite, lagging survey feedback.” —Patrick Ward, Director, Institutional Marketing, Vanguard
“That’s a tough question. I am not sure if these are underused or if I am just not seeing it used by others. Here are two: Laddering (Means-End Chain). Rarely see this at all.
Discrete Choice Modeling (DCM) or Conjoint. This is a relatively popular method among those in the industry, but I still think there are quite a large number of people (product managers for example) that approach feature optimization and pricing differently and skip DCM altogether. The reasons might vary, but they are missing out.” —Bart Borkosky, CRO, OvationMR
“The most underused tactic is continuous consumer closeness. Too much research is still organized as a series of separate projects. A brief is written, a study is conducted, findings are presented, and then the organization moves on. The problem is that people, culture, and markets keep changing long after the final presentation.
At Human8, we believe research should be designed as an ongoing decision system. Twin Communities can give teams continuous access to human understanding, allowing them to explore questions, test ideas and challenge assumptions in the flow of everyday work. Because the twins are grounded in real individuals, lived experience and cultural context, they offer more depth than generic AI personas.
But continuous closeness is not only about digital access. For strategic, sensitive, or high-risk decisions, teams should reconnect with real people through fresh research, co-creation, immersion, and cultural exploration. That is where empathy and deeper understanding come in.
This approach is effective because it shortens the distance between insight and action. It helps teams catch weak assumptions earlier, improve ideas through multiple rounds of learning and bring the human spark into more decisions than traditional project-based research can support.
It is still underused because many organizations treat research as a service that delivers answers, rather than a capability embedded in how decisions get made.” —Niels Neudecker, Managing Director, North America, Human8
TMRE Session Spotlight: New Research Methods
TMRE 2026 will be held in Denver on October 5-7, and will highlight the panel, “Leveraging Cutting-Edge Research Methods for Smarter Insights.” The panel includes Daniel Blatt, Sr. Director CX Research & Behavioral Science, Pfizer; Romani Patel, Director, Data Science, Microsoft; and Jordan Welling, Director of Consumer Insights, Tecovas.
This panel will explore the latest advancements in research techniques, including synthetic panels and AI-powered analytics to agile research methods, real-time data collection, and more. Industry leaders will share how they are leveraging these approaches to uncover actionable insights faster and more effectively, and how it’s driving more impactful business results.
Click here for more TMRE 2026 registration information and the show agenda.
Video: “Personas vs. Digital Twins: Which AI Strategy Wins in 2026?,” courtesy of Avatar Insights.
