by We are just 3 weeks away from THE INSIGHTS EXTRAVAGANZA, the APAC virtual event of the year that will bring together more than 50 speakers to discuss innovative solutions, new best practices, original thinking, and thought leadership from international brands and innovative agencies. As part of our pre-conference interviews, we recently spoke with Disha Bhatnagar, Regional Head of Insights at AirAsia about her presentation on ‘’Re-birth of research: Evolving consumer insights during pandemic’’ and the main challenges research teams are facing during the pandemic.
Question #1: Without giving too much away – what is the core message of your talk and what would you like delegates to remember?
Disha – The talk will be focussing on the current challenges and obstacles that research fraternity faces and what are the major bottlenecks for research folks from a client-side perspective essentially with the current times where cost pressures are mounting inside the boardrooms.
Question #2: Why did you choose the topic of your talk?
Disha – This topic is very crucial as a lot of survival and success of the research community depends upon how quickly we adapt and transform into new norms of market research and customer intelligence in totality. Hence I took this topic and came forward to talk as well have all the views from the panel audiences to share.
Question #3: What motivates you to join the event and what are your expectations?
Disha – It’s a great forum, many seasoned market research professionals from various industries and verticals, we definitely need such a platform to talk and give it back to the community wisely.
Question #4: There is a lot of talk about the current state of consumer insights and the impact of technology. How would you sum up the current state of the industry in 1-2 sentences?
Disha – The industry still looks like in a dinosaur age with data collection, interviews and a lot of manual insighting whereas on the other hand technology, big data and AI are leaping ahead faster than we assume not only with the data but now with the predictions and experimentation as well so the current state of the industry is risky and volatile.
Question #5: Looking back on the past months please share your thoughts on the impact of COVID-19 on the market research and the consumer behaviour in general.
Disha – Well, COVID has touched every aspect of life whether it is health, safety, economy, or even the way we live our lives with everyday essentials, the entire life pattern has been changed and challenged. In this period one thing we all have realised and embraced sooner than before is technology and convenience of e-commerce at our doorsteps. E-Commerce has taken a new definition from convenience to safety thus we can’t escape the giants now. Specific to market research and consumer behavior the impact is more on the cost side pressures, the methodologies we undertake, and overall techniques timelines of the project. Let’s talk more on these during my talk!
