Customer-Focused Innovation

Real consumer insight does not sit in market reports. It lives in everyday behaviour. I have always believed that if you want to understand the Indian consumer, you must walk the aisles, visit the kirana stores, and spend time in homes. The questions are simple: why did they choose this brand, what made them switch, what are their latest unsatisfied needs, what habit stopped them from trying something new. The answers are rarely written down. They are observed in the pauses, the hesitations, the way a hand reaches for one pack over another. India is a mosaic of markets. What sells in Chennai might fail in Chandigarh. A message that resonates in Delhi could fall flat in a tier-three town. Income, culture, and even climate shape choices. Unless you immerse yourself in these realities, your strategy risks being built on assumptions. The sharper your consumer insight, the stronger your competitive edge. Do not delegate consumer understanding to agencies or reports. Make it a personal discipline. Sit with retailers, shadow buyers, watch the trade. The real breakthroughs are found not in a meeting agenda, but in how people actually live, shop, and decide. #leadership #entrepreneurship #consumer #mindset

Most marketers don’t know what an insight is. And it shows. We’re drowning in data, trends, and decks of charts. But most of it is useless. Here’s the brutal truth: Data = Numbers on a page. (OK) Observation = “Oat milk sales are up.” (Yawn) Trend = “Plant-based is growing.” (Blind Freddy could see that) Insight = “Shoppers are switching to oat milk because it feels healthier and more sustainable than dairy.” That one sentence? That’s where growth comes from. An insight is not something you read in Nielsen. It’s the sharp “why” behind behaviour. It’s rare, valuable, and worth millions when you get it right. Most marketers confuse data with insight. That’s like confusing a shopping list with a three-course meal. One feeds you, the other doesn’t. And let’s be clear: if your “insight” could be copy-pasted from a LinkedIn carousel with pastel graphics, it’s not an insight. It’s marketing wallpaper. Examples of insights that built brands: Coke Zero Sugar: Saw “diet” was toxic, so reframed the offer. Now worth billions. Dove: Saw women were alienated by beauty ads. Built Real Beauty, and built category leadership. Red Bull: Saw people didn’t want a drink, they wanted an edge. Created a whole new category.   How to actually find a real insight (not the fluff most marketers call one): 👂 Get out of the office. Stop staring at dashboards and start talking to consumers. Go into homes, watch how people shop, sit at the dinner table or go into a few stores. You’ll learn more from one hour in front of a consumer than from 10 PowerPoint decks. 🔍 Look for contradictions. Insights usually hide in tension: “They say they want healthy, but they buy indulgent.” “They say they care about sustainability, but only if the price is right.” That gap is where opportunity lives. 📊 Stop worshipping data. Data tells you what is happening, never why. Treating data like insight is like mistaking the weather forecast for a holiday. 🧩 Connect across culture. Insights don’t come from a single dataset. They come when you combine consumer behaviour with wider cultural shifts. Example: plant-based eating didn’t explode because of soy milk — it rode the wave of climate anxiety + health + foodie culture colliding. 🚦 Test for action. A good “insight” is useless if it doesn’t drive different behaviour. If it doesn’t change your strategy, your comms, or your innovation pipeline, it isn’t an insight, it’s trivia. ✂️ Be ruthless. Kill weak insights. If it’s just “consumers like convenience,” bin it. That’s not an insight, that’s a horoscope. Most marketers stop at “interesting.” The best marketers push to the uncomfortable “why.” That’s where the money is. So let’s see it. 👉 Drop the best consumer or shopper insight you’ve seen in the comments. I’ll call BS on the weak ones.

𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱’𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 Now and then, a simple moment reveals more about consumer behaviour than any focus group or research deck ever could. One of our inbound guests — a Gujarati Indian-American married to an American gentleman landed in Delhi today. She checked into The Taj, had her plans sorted, and had a pre-booked dinner with friends at one of the city’s top restaurants. However, as often happens in travel, plans change at the last minute. The dinner got postponed, and she suddenly had a free evening. So she messaged us: “𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿?” Now, this is where most people in our line of work make the classic assumption: a Taj guest, high-end traveller, with a global profile — she must want something refined, premium, or experiential. We start thinking Indian Accent, Bukhara, Masala Library, maybe something with a skyline view. But her next message changed the script: “𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, 𝗜 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱’𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀. 𝗢𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 — 𝗜’𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀.” That’s it. That’s the 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 — 𝘄𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗴𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀. It’s a reminder that 𝗹𝘂𝘅𝘂𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁𝘂𝗮l. For someone who lives in the U.S., dining at the Taj isn’t a novelty — but being able to eat vegetarian McDonald’s fries is. And that’s the real point — consumer insight isn’t about segmenting by income or location. It’s about understanding context, emotion, and the small triggers that define comfort. Here’s what this small incident reinforced for me: 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀. The moment we start slotting customers into predictable boxes — “premium guest = premium experience” — we stop truly listening. True insights are emotional. What looks like a random craving is often rooted in memory, nostalgia, or comfort. 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. It means catching those subtle cues that algorithms and reports will always miss. At Utazzo, our business isn’t just about booking holidays — it’s about designing stress-free experiences built on genuine understanding. Every interaction, every odd request, every “Can you suggest…” moment, is a window into what people actually value. Because sometimes, what a traveller really wants isn’t the fanciest dinner in town. It’s just the fries that remind them of home — and the feeling that someone listened. #travelinsights #customerexperience #consumerbehaviour #hospitality #luxurytravel #leadership #utazzo #stressfreeholidays

As a product leader, I spend a lot of time thinking about innovation — not the flashy kind with buzzwords and pitch decks, but the kind that tackles real, messy, urgent problems head-on. One of the most formative chapters of my career was building Financial Inclusion products. 💡Some of the boldest, most ingenious innovations are being driven out of emerging economies. These aren’t markets “catching up.” They are leapfrogging — fueled by constraint, necessity, and deep local insight. Some amazing examples are 💡M-PESA Africa, turning basic mobile phones into financial lifelines in Kenya 💡Aadhar Card, giving over a billion people in India a verifiable digital identity 💡Tala, unlocking microcredit for the underbanked in places like the Philippines, Kenya, and Mexico — using just smartphone data and behavioral insights and many many more.. These aren't just clever workarounds. They’re groundbreaking models that are influencing how we think about scale, access, and design — globally. As builders, technologists, and strategists, we often talk about “first principles thinking” and “user-centric design.” Emerging economies are living laboratories for both. Want to go deeper? Some book recommendations 📚The Prosperity Paradox 📚Jugaad Innovation 📚Reverse Innovation #innovation #productmanagement #productleadership

Consumer insight comes before attention—just ask poppi 🥤 And the most valuable insights come from lived experience, from solving a problem that truly matters. That’s exactly how Poppi—the prebiotic soda brand Pepsi just acquired for $2B—was born. Its founder, Allison Ellsworth wasn’t sitting in a corporate boardroom analyzing category trends. She was dealing with debilitating gut health issues. Frustrated by the lack of natural solutions, she started experimenting in her own kitchen, using apple cider vinegar to improve digestion. She didn’t launch Poppi because market research told her to. She launched it because SHE WAS THE MARKET. And that’s what made the brand powerful. A few lessons from Poppi’s rise: ↳ Real consumer insight > expensive reports. - Data can show you trends, but it can’t tell you what really matters to people. - The best products solve personal pain points. ↳ Attention follows a meaningful product, not the other way around. - Poppi didn’t go viral first—it solved a real problem first. - The brand’s rapid rise came because people resonated with its purpose. ↳ A deep consumer connection is a competitive advantage. - Pepsi could have launched a similar product internally. - But what they couldn’t replicate was Poppi’s authenticity and founder-led story. - That’s why they had to buy it. Every brand wants attention. But attention is fleeting. What’s lasting? A deep insight that fuels innovation. Oh, and a killer IP 😜 Before you focus on anything else, ask yourself: what problem am I solving? That’s the insight that builds category-defining brands.

Consumers are not spending less. They are spending deliberately according to our recent IBM Institute for Business Value 2026 Consumer Research Study ‘Own the agentic commerce experience - Consumers are ready’. Economic pressure is widespread. More than half of consumers globally feel it, including 39% of affluent households. Yet behaviour is not simply defensive. One in three consumers report trading down to cheaper alternatives. 32% say they actively make trade offs to stay within budget. 29% are buying more private label. At the same time, 25% still choose trusted brands even when they cost more. Among Affluent AI Leaders, that rises to 41%. Among Conscious Connectors, 30%. One in five consumers describe themselves as price sensitive in some categories while selectively indulging in others. The lipstick effect is real, but more intentional. Wellness is a major anchor. 30% say diet and nutrition shape purchasing. 26% cite health and fitness goals. Health and wellness and beauty categories are now seen as essential on par with groceries and household goods. This matters because these behaviours generate the data that will train shopping agents. AI will learn not just what people buy, but when they compromise and when they refuse to. Value is no longer cheap versus expensive. It is justified versus not. — The IBM #IBV is the global number one rated consulting thought leader that delivers research led insight at the crosshairs of business, technology society. Sign up to the IBV here: https://lnkd.in/eav5Dc6R Our Consumer 2026 report combines surveys of 18,000 consumers across 23 countries and 200 retail and consumer products executives across 11 countries to examine how AI enabled shopping, trust and precision spending are reshaping commerce. Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/eCvGijDa The paper was authored by me and Dee Waddell, Richard Berkman, Hiroshi Hasegawa, Carlos Capps, Sabu Gopinath, Joe Dittmar, Milad Safadi, Jeremy (Jez) Bassinder, Shantha Farris and led by the inimitable Jane Cheung, our Global Leader for #ConsumerIndustries at the IBV. We are extremely grateful to the Industry Leaders who contributed to this report including Katherine Cullen of The National Retail Federation, Byron Ells of Sobeys, Matthieu Houle, CIO, ALDO Group, Stanislas Vignon, Head of Insights at Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) as well as the numerous other clients who were interviewed. Also the IBM contributors: Hugo Catarino, Pierre Charchaflian, Kostas Didaskalou, Karl Haller, Mark Innes, Colm O'Brien, Mary Wallace, and the IBV team Sara Aboulhosn, Steve Ballou, Douna Daou, Kathy Martin, Thiago Sartori and Joanna Wilkins. #AgenticCommerce #AIinRetail #ConsumerBehaviour #AI #Retail #ConsumerProducts #CommerceStrategy #Luxury #RetailInnovation #AICommerce #DigitalCommerce #CustomerExperience #ItsAGreatTimeToBeAnIBMer #IBMIBV #Consumer2026

Exciting Innovation in AI: Insight-RAG Transforms Retrieval Augmented Generation! I just came across a groundbreaking research paper from Megagon Labs that addresses fundamental limitations in traditional RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) systems. Their new framework, called Insight-RAG, significantly outperforms conventional RAG approaches by up to 60 percentage points in accuracy while using less contextual information! >> What makes Insight-RAG different? Traditional RAG systems retrieve documents based on surface-level relevance, often missing crucial information. Insight-RAG introduces a novel three-stage approach: 1. Insight Identifier: An LLM analyzes the input query to extract essential informational requirements, acting as an intelligent filter that focuses on deeper, task-specific context. 2. Insight Miner: A specialized LLM (Llama-3.2 3B) continually pre-trained with LoRA on domain-specific documents mines content directly addressing the identified insights. 3. Response Generator: The original query is integrated with the retrieved insights to generate a contextually enriched response. >> Technical Performance The researchers evaluated Insight-RAG against conventional RAG using scientific paper datasets (AAN and OC), creating specialized benchmarks for three key challenges: - Deeply Buried Information: Insight-RAG significantly outperformed RAG even with just one generated insight - Multi-Source Information: When information needed to be synthesized from multiple documents, Insight-RAG showed superior performance with fewer retrieved documents - Non-QA Tasks: For citation recommendation tasks, Insight-RAG consistently improved performance by up to 5.4 percentage points The framework was tested with multiple state-of-the-art LLMs including GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, Llama-3.3 70B, and DeepSeek-R1, with DeepSeek-R1 showing the best performance for information retrieval tasks. This innovation represents a significant advancement in how we can leverage external knowledge to enhance LLM performance, particularly for complex tasks requiring nuanced understanding of information across multiple sources.

If you want to understand consumers, don’t study them in artificial settings. Go where real decisions happen. Focus groups tell you what people think they do. Observing them in the wild, at home, in stores, in daily routines, reveals what they actually do. That’s where real insights live. Consider this: People say they want healthier snacks, yet impulse buys at checkout still favor chocolate bars over granola. Shoppers claim they read product labels, but in reality, most grab what’s familiar. The gap between what consumers say and do is where the magic happens. Brands that thrive don’t rely on scripted answers. They step into the jungle, listen, and adapt.

GLP-1 users are eating 40% less food. So why are they spending MORE on groceries? New data from Dan Frommer's The New Consumer Consumer Trends 2026 reveals something retailers need to understand: 428 current GLP-1 users report they're "trading up" to premium products across every category surveyed. Not some categories. Every single one. The net "trading up" scores are striking: Fitness/wellness products: +51% Energy drinks: +39% Beauty products: +35% Fresh fruits and vegetables: +35% Why? 56% say "I eat less overall, so I can afford higher-quality food." Another 56% say "I want to enjoy the meals I do eat more." This is the strategic inflection point most food retailers are missing. The conventional response: Cut costs to maintain volume as consumption shrinks. The Strategic Renewal response: Reframe your capabilities around value per transaction, not transactions per customer. Here's what the data shows: ~24% of US households now include a GLP-1 user. By 2030, these households will represent 35% of food and beverage sales (Circana). This isn't a niche. This is your customer base reframing what they value. And yet—most retailers are still optimizing for volume. More SKUs. Bigger pack sizes. Promotional pricing to drive cart size. That's competing on convenience in a market that's actively moving toward quality. The companies that will win aren't the ones cutting portions or launching "GLP-1 friendly" product lines. They're the ones who genuinely reframe their value proposition: from feeding people more to feeding people better. We will discuss this more in our Nearly Now 2026 coming out in the new year. What would that look like in your business? How would your merchandising strategy change if you assumed customers were making half as many food decisions—but were willing to pay twice as much for each one? #StrategicRenewal #RetailStrategy #CompetingOnQuality #ConsumerTrends

It’s more than the data collection footprint.   I’ve worked for large global Insights suppliers for most of my career. Of course clients think of we suppliers in this space as skilled in collecting data across many markets, and that’s true with our in-country staff and expertise. But I was reminded recently by Ipsos Global Chief Client Officer Eleni Nicholas that the value proposition of working with a global firm goes far beyond the data collection. The real value comes from connecting the dots that others can't see.   * Connecting Trends: Identifying a pattern in one market, understanding its potential to ripple across others, and turning that insight into a strategic advantage. It’s about seeing the global narrative, not just the local snapshot.   * Deeper Cultural Insight: Moving beyond language to understand the "why" behind local behaviors. This is crucial for ensuring a brand's message and products resonate authentically, avoiding costly cultural missteps.   * Anticipating What's Next: A constant pulse on multiple markets allows you to spot emerging needs and growth opportunities before they become obvious. It’s the difference between following trends and setting them. * Smarter Risk Mitigation: Understanding the complex interplay of local competition, regulations, and economic factors provides the foresight needed to expand with confidence. Ultimately, a global research partner can and should go beyond delivering quality data; we provide the clarity and context needed to make confident, strategic decisions on a global scale.   #MarketResearch #GlobalStrategy #ConsumerInsights #BusinessIntelligence #CulturalNuance Dana Lowe Matt K. Mary Ann Packo Nick Mercurio Katie Koval Jim Needell Eric Peerless Ana Maria Leyva Ian Elmer Christy Larkin Phil Shaw