Unlocking the Future of Consumer Insights with Conveo’s AI-Powered Research Platform

In the rapidly evolving world of market research, the rise of generative AI has sparked exciting possibilities, and perhaps just as many misconceptions. While much of the industry’s early AI adoption has focused on tasks like automated moderation or qualitative analysis at scale, these represent just the tip of the iceberg. The real transformation, as Niels, Head of Research and Methodologies at Conveo, puts it, lies in how we collaborate with AI to enhance human understanding.

In a recent Conveo webinar and live demo, Niels walked through how the Conveo AI Insights Platform is redefining the research process from start to finish—breaking down human constraints, enhancing creativity, and delivering unprecedented speed without sacrificing depth or nuance. The session used a fascinating “coffee rituals” study across five countries to show the platform’s capabilities in action.

This blog post will take you through the key highlights, features, and implications of the demo—so whether you’re a research leader, an insights professional, or simply curious about the next generation of consumer understanding, you’ll see exactly how AI is unlocking new superpowers for the industry.

From Moderation to Transformation: AI as a True Research Collaborator

At Conveo, the philosophy is clear: AI shouldn’t just replace manual steps, it should be a co-worker that helps you design better studies, connect more deeply with respondents, and surface richer insights than ever before.

This vision manifests in three key phases of research:

1. Smart Study Setup – where AI uses contextual and cognitive understanding to design your research.

2. Adaptive AI Moderation – where interviews are guided in real time, adjusting dynamically based on what participants say.

3. Instant Analysis and Insight Generation – where data can be interrogated, segmented, and transformed into actionable stories in moments.

The result is a research process with no bottlenecks, where creativity and depth are enhanced, not limited, by the tools you use.

The Coffee Rituals Study: A Global Exploration

To demonstrate these capabilities, Niels shared a real-world example: a study exploring coffee-making rituals across five culturally distinct countries. Over 150 participants took part in interviews lasting around 14 minutes each. The conversations covered everything from daily brewing habits and appliance preferences to brand perceptions and product feedback.

Why coffee? As Niels explained, coffee is a deeply cultural product. It’s not just a beverage, it’s a ritual, a personal moment, and often a reflection of identity. This makes it an ideal lens to showcase how Conveo captures not just what people do, but why they do it.

Phase 1: Smart Study Setup

Context-Aware Design

Most research projects begin with a lengthy, manual process of drafting objectives, discussion guides, and measurement questions. Conveo replaces this with a dynamic, conversational setup process.

In the demo, Niels simply prompted the platform to explore the who, what, where, why, and how of coffee rituals. The AI immediately generated draft research objectives, ready for refinement in real time.

Researcher-in-the-Loop Control

Critically, Conveo’s AI doesn’t dictate the design, it collaborates. Niels could prompt the platform to go deeper on certain areas, tweak wording for creativity, or even reject suggestions entirely. Measurement questions were generated from inputs, with options to control:

• Level of probing – deciding how deep to go into each topic.

• Structured vs. unstructured questions – balancing qualitative richness with quantitative comparability.

• Stimulus integration – uploading brand images, product concepts, or other materials to be randomized for testing.

The platform supports over 50 languages, enabling truly global studies without the heavy lift of manual translation or localization.

Phase 2: AI-Moderated Interviews

Once the study is live, Conveo’s AI moderators step in, not as rigid script-followers, but as adaptive interviewers that adjust based on what the participant says.

This means if a participant mentions a surprising habit or product use, the AI can explore that thread further, rather than sticking to a fixed set of questions. This flexibility mirrors the agility of skilled human moderators while maintaining the efficiency and scalability of automation.

The coffee rituals interviews revealed fascinating cultural nuances, from the meditative morning pour-over routines in some countries to the quick, appliance-driven convenience favored elsewhere.

Phase 3: Instant, Multi-Layered Analysis

The most striking part of the demo came after data collection, when Niels showcased Conveo’s one-click analysis capabilities.

Executive Summaries and Thematic Overviews

In seconds, the platform produced:

• Background statistics – demographics, frequency of certain responses, and other quantitative snapshots.

• Thematic analysis – clustering responses into key themes (e.g., “morning ritual,” “brand loyalty,” “appliance frustration”).

• Supporting quotes – with clickable access to the exact transcript excerpts behind each theme.

One standout theme was the emotional dimension of coffee as a personal moment of calm before the day begins—a sentiment echoed across multiple countries.

Granular Filtering and Cross-Comparisons

Users can filter data at multiple levels, for example, viewing responses by country to uncover regional differences, or drilling down into specific product mentions.

Niels demonstrated how a snippet like, “It’s easy, but I only give it a seven because it’s loud and messy” could be instantly surfaced, downloaded, and dropped into a report or presentation.

The ability to move seamlessly from high-level trends to raw, human quotes creates a powerful bridge between data and storytelling.

Talking to Your Data: Interactive Insight Generation

Perhaps the most revolutionary feature in the platform is Talk to Your Data, an interactive prompt-based interface for exploring findings and co-creating solutions.

From Personas to Product Concepts

In the coffee study, Niels showed how the platform could:

• Generate detailed personas like “Lucas,” including his favorite coffee, ideal brewing setup, and brand preferences, complete with AI-generated visuals.

• Identify unmet needs and propose new product concepts, including benefits, positioning, and even mock-up visuals, each supported by direct consumer quotes.

This capability turns the data into a springboard for innovation, enabling researchers and marketers to go beyond insights into concrete product and strategy development.

Multimodal AI: The Next Frontier

The latest addition to Conveo’s toolkit is multimodal AI, capable of analyzing not just what respondents say, but what they do and how they do it, combining verbal, nonverbal, and contextual cues.

Action and Object Recognition

In the demo, a participant’s pantry tour was automatically tagged with detected actions (e.g., “showing product”) and products/brands (e.g., “Phil’s Coffee,” “Milk Street Spice Sugars”). This makes it easy to find all instances of a particular brand mention across hours of footage.

Emotional Analysis

In a separate test using a BBC advertisement, Conveo tracked viewers’ nonverbal emotional reactions over time, mapping shifts from fear to relief as the narrative unfolded. These patterns could be cross-referenced with specific quotes to understand why a certain moment triggered a certain feeling.

For ad testing, communications evaluation, and creative development, this represents a huge leap forward—making it possible to capture real human reactions without relying solely on self-reporting.

Why This Matters for the Future of Insights

The Conveo demo makes one thing clear: the real potential of AI in research isn’t about replacing people, it’s about removing friction so people can focus on higher-value thinking.

• Speed without superficiality – Instant analysis doesn’t mean losing depth; the source transcripts are always just a click away.

• Scale without losing empathy – AI moderation allows for large, diverse samples without turning the experience into a rigid survey.

• Creativity without chaos – AI-generated concepts and visuals are grounded in actual consumer data, not guesswork.

By integrating AI at every stage—from design to analysis to ideation, Conveo enables a level of insight agility that traditional methods simply can’t match.

The Takeaway

If the coffee rituals study is any indication, the future of consumer insights will be faster, richer, and more collaborative, blurring the lines between research, analysis, and innovation.

Whether you’re testing ads, exploring new markets, or developing products, the Conveo AI Insights Platform offers:

• Smarter setup – from objectives to stimuli, designed in minutes.

• Adaptive moderation – keeping conversations human and dynamic.

• Instant multi-level analysis – from thematic overviews to quote-level truth.

• Interactive data exploration – co-creating with your findings.

• Multimodal emotional insights – seeing what people do and feel, not just what they say.

As Niels concluded in the webinar: “Hopefully you’ll become as enthusiastic as the clients featured below.” After seeing the demo, it’s hard not to be.