Using consumer and category insights derived through generative AI to boost performance

From insights to innovation and content creation to personal productivity, four focus areas in generative AI hold the most promise for consumer goods marketing teams. The technology can process very large amounts of data to yield the granularity and coverage, including smaller brands traditional research methods might miss. And because it doesn’t rely on standard questionnaires or foggy memories, gen AI eliminates preconceived ideas and biases to uncover better operational feedback. Analyses we’ve conducted with Atlas Intelligence return results up to four times faster than prior methods and less than half the cost. For business leaders ready to capitalize on these new capabilities, discovering consumer insights stands out as the foundational place to begin. 

To conduct our study, we applied the jobs-to-be-done framework, a strategic approach to understand the goals that drive consumer choices beyond individual product features. This methodology is effective with gen AI because it gives marketers the decision-making context they need to identify market opportunities for their brands and products. Our recent internal analysis of approximately 4.5 million dietary supplements reviews posted online over the 2019-2023 period captured insights for business growth and innovation in four job categories across 7,000 brands:

• Nutritional support: Using supplements to provide additional nutrients to their diets
• Wellness improvement: Seeking holistic improvement to physical and emotional well-being
• Physical and mental performance: Choosing products that power minds and bodies to perform at a higher level
• Body functions: Selecting products to address a specific health concern 

The U.S. market for dietary supplements generated almost $51 billion in revenue in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.7% through 2030. How can gen AI help manufacturers capitalize on this opportunity? One hallmark of gen AI is its ability to use unstructured data from the huge volume of feedback consumers leave about the brands and products they “hire” to meet their needs—and their experiences with and their perceptions of them. Using gen AI, we can summarize, analyze, categorize and draw conclusions at scale, covering hundreds of thousands of data points. Gen AI’s bottom’s-up approach to reviews assesses each word and places key phrases in analytics friendly buckets. Beyond word counting, it analyzes the words that come before and after to determine consumers’ intent and meaning to gauge importance and impact.

By better accessing and evaluating untapped consumer data, brands can more efficiently and thoroughly address key business questions such as brand and portfolio strategy; product innovation or merger and acquisition opportunities; refining brand messaging and positioning versus competition; developing customer or channel-specific plans; and tracking brand health and impact of campaigns. In many hypercompetitive categories, it can provide the edge needed to stay ahead of the rest of the market.

• Consumer needs. Cardiovascular and anti-aging products are making a comeback, and there’s a growing need for dietary supplements to support mental and holistic health, consistent with a surge in consumer interest for products that enhance cognitive function, healthy sleep patterns and emotional well-being. Conversely, exercise-related needs are in decline as consumers are more interested in a broader, holistic approach to their health and less interested in using dietary supplements to enhance specific aspects of their physical health.

• Product attributes. Consumers are increasingly paying attention to the quality and origin of their dietary supplements. This is an interesting insight because it suggests growing consumer sophistication and preference for organic and nongenetically modified products that support and align with their holistic approach to health and wellness.
  
  Of note is gen AI’s ability to go well beyond “tastes good” or “tastes bad” as a product attribute and rank specific sub-concepts within an overall job and by brands with candidates for that job. A brand might substantially outperform competitors with its fruit and cherry flavors, for example, but fall behind on orange.
• Product forms. While pills remain a staple delivery form within the category, alternatives such as gummies have surged in popularity to hold the second largest share of the category as consumers prefer products that taste good. Conversely, the share of powders has been in steady decline since 2019 because of concerns related to mixability and taste, notably for on-the-go jobs. Poor mixability has led to increased interest in other options.

Consumers within this job struggle with gastrointestinal problems or understand the importance of a healthy gut microbiome to their overall wellness. To prevent, reduce and alleviate symptoms of an unhealthy gut and support an active lifestyle, they’re looking for digestive health and clinical stomach health products that are easy-to-consume as part of their morning routine, especially while away from home. Prebiotic and probiotic supplements and single-ingredient supplements such as fiber and collagen are popular.

A good night’s sleep sets the tone for both physical and mental health. Consumers in search of products to help them fall and stay asleep are turning to prescription alternatives such as melatonin, magnesium and zinc.

One of the reasons we chose gut and digestive health and sleep jobs for deeper analysis is the low level of consumer satisfaction with existing products. Using gen AI, we quantified consumers’ level of satisfaction across key concepts such as needs delivery, product attributes and usage occasions to understand where opportunities exist. We also were able to explore job size trends because gen AI isn’t constrained to data from a single point in time.

Gen AI also can provide a high level of granularity in areas of consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, including how well a product delivered promised benefits or met expectations for specific product attributes. Manufacturers can see not only the jobs consumers use their brands to fill but also how their brand compares to the competition. They can quantify net sentiment to highlight potential opportunities or vulnerabilities.

Innovation is a priority area for all consumer goods brands. The dietary supplements market provides an interesting—and illustrative—case in point for gen AI’s massive potential in the marketing toolbox. In a matter of weeks, teams can invigorate their brand strategy to identify new opportunities, outpace vulnerable incumbents or rally underperforming products with new enhancements. For the most part, companies are exploring how to bolster existing processes and improve productivity by buying gen AI applications or partnering with developers to create semi-customized tools. As we collectively gain more experience with the technology, we see them evolving to a “powered” approach over the next 18 months, focusing on not only evolving workstreams but also achieving disruptive growth.

Gen AI holds the power to eventually transform marketing and other business functions as we know them today, unleashing new operating models. For those who do it well, they’ll unlock significant competitive advantage through proprietary applications and systems.