What’s the Difference Between Consumer Insights and Market Research?

“Insights” and “Market Research” are used interchangeably in our industry, but what are their true definitions and which should you focus on?

by Molly Purcell

Digital Marketing Specialist at Greenbook

It’s a common question: What’s the difference between market research and consumer insights? Join us in taking a look at the gap between the two.

How do we define market research and consumer insights?

Market Research is the practice of collecting and analyzing data to answer discrete business questions. It is an all-purpose term that people will use when referring to research, consumer insights, data, and analytics.

Consumer Insights is the practice of using available data to derive broader business insights for effective business decision-making. It’s an industry term used to refer to data and analytics as they are used in business decision-making. Consumer insights teams support and guide brand team to be consumer-centric, looking to answer Why and not just What.

What do market researchers and insights professionals do differently?

Those that consider live in the world of market research look to:

Make recommendations for specific questions
Analyze the cold, hard, facts
Benchmark against previous periods in time
Present data to marketing (without necessarily getting involved in client meetings)
Analyze data from each stream individually
Focus on the original question/research goal
Build the research database

Insights professionals often look to:

Make multi-disciplinary recommendations
Find the story in the data
Benchmark against other organizations
Participate in client staff meetings
Use multiple data streams
Focus on future growth
Give access to dashboards

What further differentiates insights and market research?

	Data formatting	Purpose of data	Geographic popularity	Relationship to marketing
Market Research	Delivers data that can be summarized and forms the basis of a recommendation	Delivers on research objectives; used to answer specific questions	More popular in economies heavily reliant on manufacturing (e.g., China, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Poland, and South Korea)	Delivers data to marketing
Consumer Insights	Delivers data as a narrative, focuses on storytelling	Delivers on research objectives and knowledge needs; strives to recommend actions for effective decision making	More commonly used in service-based economies (e.g., United States, Brazil, Bermuda, UK, Greece, Australia, and Singapore)	Marketing is a business partner. When marketing and consumer insights are well aligned, they work together seamlessly. A best practice is to include marketing in the process of synthesizing the learning from consumer insights projects to gain applicable insights and build deeper knowledge in the organization.

Want to learn more about Consumer Insights?

Interested in learning more about consumer insights? Consider the following GreenBook resources:

consumer research market research industry

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Molly Purcell

Digital Marketing Specialist at Greenbook

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The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.