While AI will help with ideation and operational tasks, Vitalo stresses that human insight remains crucial for uncovering emotional connections and driving innovation that AI cannot detect. She also discusses how qualitative research is having a moment with AI moderation and analysis tools, including the emerging use of synthetic audiences for ideation.
The conversation covers how these versatile research skills provide competitive advantages through faster insight development—and how insights professionals are increasingly taking on strategic, business-consultative roles within organizations.
The Mixed-Method Approach to Research
All Things Insights: Here we are at TMRE 2025. We have the pleasure of being with Elisa Vitalo, Vice President, Insights, Product Marketing & Digital Experience at GoodRx. Thank you so much for coming on and being with us today. The show’s theme is the next era of insights. Obviously, there’s lots of talk about AI and the human intelligence factor as well in that mix. Just what are your thoughts of this next era, and the future of insights?
Elisa Vitalo: Thank you for having me. I think that there is going to be a lot more need for researchers to be sort of these Swiss Army knives of research, where they really understand a lot of different methodologies and skill sets that traditionally, in the past, they haven’t always had to do.
So when I started in research, you could be a very clear qualitative researcher. You could be a very clear quantitative researcher. I don’t think that’s going to exist in the course of the next five years, the next ten years. I think really being a truly mixed-method researcher is going to be extremely imperative.
And then I think AI is going to come in and help with some of the ideation, help with some of the more sort of operational tasks, and expedite some of the analysis. But I think the human touch is actually going to be even more important than it has been before.
AI is going to be great at telling us what people have already articulated. It’s not going to be great at helping us to uncover those nuggets that are what really great researchers are able to do to drive innovation, and to think about what the next step in product development will be, to understand what the emotion really is that connects with a user or a consumer. And so I think the ability for researchers to be able to understand that is going to be even more important.
Faster Insight Development
All Things Insights: Speaking of that future researcher, you talked about the mixed-method approach, and being as versatile as a Swiss Army knife, of course. I love that comparison. I think you mentioned to me once before about competitive advantage. I mean, how do all these skills play into that on a team? I imagine it’s different now, as you’re saying, from those days if you were just specializing in one skill.
Elisa Vitalo: I think having a research team that’s able to blend those skills and provides a competitive advantage from the speed with which you’re able to develop the insights and be able to create them into something that’s actionable for the organization.
I also think it’s imperative to be able to find the nuggets that I was talking about in a lot of different places, and be able to bring those to market a lot more quickly. I think having researchers as individuals and research teams as a whole that can combine all of these skill sets, you can consolidate your data a lot faster. You can get to the real crux of the insight and the innovation a lot faster. All of that is going to make you more competitive in the market.
Keeping the Human Touch
All Things Insights: It starts with the leadership of the team of course. Is AI and all this influx of tools and solutions and services and so-called solutions, is there less emphasis on the kind of do-it-yourself trend, or is that just still ever present? Does that always strike a chord with the researcher?
Elisa Vitalo: I think that always strikes a chord with the researcher, and I think the do-it-yourself perspective just shifts a little. What are you leveraging AI to do for you and enable you to do it yourself? And then, what are you still doing in that traditional DIY type of methodological grouping or skill set that you have, I don’t think it takes away from that. I don’t think we’re ever going to get to a place where AI is going to do all of the research for it and be able to do it in a way that really brings the human touch that you need, that makes consumer insights special. But I think that it’s just going to be a tool to help enable that.
Charting Future Research Directions
All Things Insights: Exploring TMRE this year for a bit, what trends do you see that you feel are kind of the next wave of evolution in the insights world? Is qual, for example, having a moment?
Elisa Vitalo: I think qual is having a moment. I think every time you come to these conferences, it oscillates. So one year, it’s qual, one year, it’s quant, one year, it’s AI, one year, it’s data analytics. It kind of varies depending on where the trends are. I think qual is having a bit of a moment with AI moderation, more of the AI analysis of qualitative interviews. So I think that it definitely is, but I think a lot of what I’m seeing are the qualitative AI tools that we can use to start to do idea generation.
I was talking to a vendor earlier who was talking about using synthetic audiences just to start ideation, to start your thought process of where you might go with research. That was actually a use case I hadn’t thought of before. Because I’ve been skeptical of synthetic audiences, but I was like, OK, I can get on board with that in a qualitative capacity. So I think I see a lot of those tools are kind of where it’s going in that direction.
All Things Insights: There are all these tools and solutions. There’s the Swiss Army knife of solutions, and all the various skills that researchers need today. This future researcher, is it more geared towards being a business consultant nowadays?
Elisa Vitalo: I definitely think so. And I think that’s where researchers have been trying to get to for a long time. We’ve been trying to become more business consultative in a way, and have those insights leveraged within the organization. I think the insights teams that have been really successful have been able to take on that role.
And so I think that that’s how you’re going to see insights grow as a team and a function, is how do we become more strategists? And that’s part of the reason why I also own in my position, product marketing, and I also own digital experience on our team, because insights, product marketing, digital experience, it’s all a part of one big strategy. How do we make sure that those things are coming together? And I think insights is going to take more and more of a role in other organizations in that way.
Editor’s Note: The next TMRE will take place on October 5-7, 2026, and will be co-located with Content Marketing World at the Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO.
