research methods

2025 TOP MEMBER QUESTIONS with ANSWERS

2025 TOP MEMBER QUESTIONS with ANSWERS

The ARF Knowledge Center provides secondary research services for ARF and ARF-MSI members on a broad range of topics, especially in advertising, marketing and research best practices. Continuing the core trend from previous years, members tended to ask questions specific to their category or business interests. However, there were also a few hot topics that popped up across membership, such as sports marketing and sponsorships, influencer marketing and AI. In addition, there were some larger, broader trends in themes specific to each constituency, outlined below.

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When AI Takes the Survey: Evaluating LLMs as a New Tool for Consumer Insight

When AI Takes the Survey: Evaluating LLMs as a New Tool for Consumer Insight

  • ARF
  • MSI

The study in this MSI working paper evaluates whether large language models (LLMs) can serve as a reliable source of consumer preference data—potentially transforming how market research is conducted. Using conjoint-style survey questions, the researchers compared LLM-generated choices with human responses to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a variety of product attributes. They find that LLMs often approximate human preferences surprisingly well, especially when fine-tuned with prior survey data, though important limitations remain. For marketers, the research highlights both the promise and the boundaries of using AI-generated insights to accelerate testing, concept screening and early-stage innovation work

Member Only Access
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