A customer insight, or consumer insight, is an interpretation of trends in human behaviors which aims to increase the effectiveness of a product or service for the consumer, as well as increase sales for the financial benefit of those provisioning the product or service. There is an overlap between

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Ma ...

and customer insights. While market researchers can produce consumer insights, not all insights require market research techniques. The insights can be acquired using

competitive intelligence Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge about the competitive environment to improve organizational performance. It involves the systematic collection and analysis of information from ...

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

, social media listening, geomarketing, and text analytics, as well as

predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. In busine ...

and database marketing. Specifically, consumer insights is a field that focuses on analyzing market research and acting as a bridge between Research and Marketing departments within a company. Commonly referred to as CI, it is the intersection between the interests of the

consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. ...

and the features of a

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

. Its main purpose is to understand why the consumer cares for the brand as well as their underlying mindsets, moods, motivation, desires, aspirations, that motivates and trigger their attitude and actions. Paul Laughlin emphasises four components of this definition: First, such insight is “''non-obvious''”, so it does not normally come from just one source of information and often does not come from just analysis or just research; rather there is a need to converge evidence to glean insights. Second, true insights need to be ''“action-able”''; hypotheses that stay theoretical and cannot be tested in practice are not insights. Third, customer insights should be powerful enough that when they are acted upon customers can be persuaded to ''"change their behaviour"''. Just benefitting from targeting based on analysing past behaviour and assuming people will be creatures of habit does not reveal any depth of understanding them, certainly not insight. Fourth, to be sustainable, the goal of such customer change must be for ''"mutual benefit"''.Laughlin, P (2015
"Holistic Customer Insight as an engine of growth"
Institute of Direct & Digital Marketing (IDM) Journal of Direct, Data & Digital Marketing Practice Vol 16 Issue 2

References

{{reflist Customer experience