At this year’s Market Research Society CX | UX | MR Conference, one message resonated across every session: insight on its own is no longer enough. 

For years, organisations have invested heavily in understanding customers, gathering data, building journeys, mapping behaviours. Yet the conversation has evolved. The question is no longer how do we generate insight? But rather how do we ensure insight lives, connects and drives action across the organisation? 

This shift marks a profound transformation for the research industry, and it points to a new frontier for brands, researchers and decision-makers alike. 

Empathy Remains the Starting Point, Not the Destination 

The conference opened with a powerful reminder: empathy remains the foundation of meaningful insight. 

Understanding human truths, motivations and emotional contexts is still where impactful research begins. But across the day, one theme became increasingly clear: empathy alone is insufficient. 

Insight today must become: 

  • Alive: continuously refreshed, not static  
  • Shared: embedded across teams, not trapped in silos  
  • Actionable: directly connected to business decisions  

This was exemplified in the work shared by HSBC, where iterative sprint-based models and cross-functional collaboration are helping to keep insight dynamic and operational. 

The implication is significant: insight is no longer a deliverable. It is becoming an organisational capability. 

The Silos Are Finally Collapsing 

For years, the industry has spoken about breaking down organisational silos. This time, it feels real. 

Across presentations from HSBC and IKEA, the convergence of disciplines was impossible to ignore. 

The traditional boundaries between Market Research, Customer Experience, User Experience and Product are dissolving. 

What does this look like in practice? 

  • IKEA is integrating research, service design and employee insight to accelerate innovation. 
  • HSBC is embedding insight directly into experience design. 

The direction is clear: insight teams are evolving from knowledge providers into decision enablers. 

This is not just structural change. It is strategic repositioning. 

From Share of Voice to Share of Experience 

One of the most compelling shifts discussed at the conference was the move away from Share of Voice as the dominant measure of brand strength. 

Increasingly, the stronger predictor of growth is Share of Experience. 

This is a significant evolution in thinking. 

Brands have traditionally focused on what they say – their media presence, their visibility, their messaging. But consumers respond to what they experience. 

And not all experiences carry the same weight: a product consumed from a bottle versus a can; an in-store purchase versus an online transaction; a digital interaction versus a physical encounter. Each creates a different emotional and perceptual outcome. 

The strategic implication is profound: growth is no longer shaped by communication alone, but by the quality, consistency and memorability of experience. 

Experience Remains Emotional, Contextual and Often Broken 

Despite progress, many sessions highlighted a difficult truth: customer experiences remain fragmented and frequently flawed. 

Examples ranged from poor usability in UK banking websites to inaccessible customer journeys and friction-heavy streaming experiences where key decisions are made in seconds. 

Accessibility emerged as a particularly important lens. 

The principle is simple but powerful: designing better for those with accessibility needs improves the experience for everyone. And yet, the broader conclusion across multiple case studies was unmistakable: there is still considerable work to do. Experience design remains unfinished business. 

Consumer Closeness Must Scale 

One of the most practical conversations of the day centred on consumer closeness. 

The challenge facing organisations is not whether they should be closer to consumers – it is how to do so at scale, without sacrificing depth. 

This requires a rebalancing: 

  • strengthening the consumer “muscle”, not just the commercial one; 
  • building credibility and curiosity, even in lean teams; 
  • connecting consumer understanding to real business projects and measurable outcomes. 

The real challenge is not conducting more research. It is making research more relevant, more frequent and more directly linked to action. 

AI Moderation: Evolving Quantitative Research 

In Eumetra International’s session, alongside Glaut, we explored how AI-moderated interviewing is opening a new space within quantitative research. 

This is an important distinction: AI moderation is not replacing qualitative research. It is reshaping quantitative research. 

By embedding AI-moderated conversations into large-scale quant studies, organisations can now: 

  • capture depth at scale, not just structured responses; 
  • explore emotional reactions alongside performance metrics; 
  • test early-stage assets such as visuals, video and messaging before live experiences occur.  

In Brightstar case study, this approach helped evaluate how pre-experience touchpoints shape expectations, emotional engagement and intent to participate. 

This creates a powerful new hybrid space: structured enough to scale, flexible enough to explore. 

For researchers, this could represent one of the most important methodological shifts of the next decade. 

The Emerging Frontier: Pre-experience 

Perhaps the most important unanswered question of the conference was not about journeys themselves, but what happens before they begin. 

Across sessions, the focus remained on experiences, journeys and touchpoints. But increasingly, consumer decisions are being shaped upstream. 

Before interacting with brands, people are already: 

  • asking AI what to buy; 
  • planning decisions independently; 
  • forming expectations before the first touchpoint. 

This changes the equation. If experience is now the primary driver of growth, then we must ask: who is shaping that experience before the brand enters the picture? 

This is where the next evolution of insight may lie. Not simply understanding experiences. But understanding pre-experiences. 

The next chapter for insight 

The industry is clearly moving: 

  • From insight to action. 
  • From silos to integration. 
  • From communication to experience. 

The next transition may be even more important: 

  • From experience to pre-experience. 

For insight leaders, this means expanding the lens: not just understanding what consumers do.
Not just understanding what consumers feel. But understanding how decisions are being shaped before the journey even begins. 

That may well define the next generation of competitive advantage and the next chapter of insight itself.