Access to the right data ought to lead to smarter decision-making, less risk, and a better return on investment. However, a survey sponsored by Oracle of 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries found that 86 percent say the volume of data is making decisions in their personal and professional lives more complicated. The problem isn’t just the number of sources or the volume; it’s that much of it is either out of date, not specific to the decision at hand, or isn’t analysed fast enough to act on. What brands really need is the ability to process and apply insight at the pace of business.
An era of acceleration
Effective marketing has always been founded on a deep understanding of why people behave the way they do and what could cause them to change that behaviour. Unfortunately, good consumer insight is more elusive than ever, not just because consumers are more diverse and distracted than before, but because they are more unpredictable. In today’s fast-paced world, a simple TikTok or Instagram video can change someone’s priorities in just a few seconds. As a result, consumer behaviour is changing more rapidly than ever before, and their motivations, expectations, and beliefs are harder to pin down.
Without up-to-date insight into how consumers feel, think, and act, new opportunities can go unrecognised, and ideas struggle to gain traction. Without the right data, it’s harder to test hypotheses, build confidence around ideas, and bring others along. Building momentum with timely insight is essential. It helps anchor ideas in real consumer context, secure internal buy-in, and frame them in the moments that matter so they resonate and create a competitive edge. To make well-informed decisions, brands need insights based on today, not yesterday.
Timely insight from real-time hybrid research
So, how do we solve this dilemma? Here at Kantar, we believe one of the answers is real-time hybrid research: a smarter way to blend qualitative depth and quantitative scale to unlock today’s insights in real time and enable confident, timely decision-making.
Qualitative research has always been the primary way brands gain deep understanding of their consumers, while quantitative research has traditionally offered greater scale and statistical validation. Hybrid research allows brands to enjoy the best of both qualitative and quantitative, delivering fast insight at scale, identifying, optimising, and refining ideas in the moment by talking to real people in real time.
The need for faster, deeper consumer understanding is exactly why we created Kantar Live—a new way to bring qual and quant together in real time. Kantar Live connects you directly with consumers through an expertly moderated online session and powerful built-in AI, blending rich qualitative insight with the scale and speed of quantitative. It helps you turn insights into clear, strategic actions grounded in real human perspectives.
We recently used Kantar Live to help Unilever’s Dove brand team explore the relative merits of two concepts for a new whole body deodorant. The session leveraged Kantar Live’s capabilities to explore and compare the two concepts to understand which elements resonated with potential consumers and which could be optimised further. The upload of consumer’s own photos and videos proved important in highlighting the context behind unmet consumer needs and revealed key preferences around product format and concept appeal. Ultimately, the research confirmed the need for a whole body deodorant while identifying the barriers and facilitators that would help improve the probability of successful adoption.
Before diving into how Kantar Live works, let’s explore what makes real-time hybrid research so valuable to brands today.
Five benefits of real-time hybrid research
We believe that real-time hybrid research offers brands a significant step forward in making better, insight-driven decisions, by addressing the pain points that have led to today’s data overload.
Accelerating consumer insight
Even very early-stage ideas can now be progressed with confidence, giving brands the ability to change course or invest more as needed. This is made possible through real-time qualitative research at scale, which accelerates understanding without sacrificing nuance. In-depth consumer feedback captures how consumers think and feel today, allowing new insights a chance to flourish, identifying new opportunities, and dispelling pre-conceptions and outdated ideas.
Identifying the motivations behind people’s behaviours
Far too much data available to brands today tells us what people are doing without telling us why. Explorative qualitative research helps identify the all-important motivations and feelings that lie behind consumer behaviours, making the research more insightful, while polling and quantitative analysis boosts confidence and makes decision making less risky.
Increasing agility and specificity
Real-time research brings increased agility to the development lifecycle, enabling a test-and-learn mindset. Research can now deliver insights precisely when needed and focus on the problem at hand, confirming winning ideas, identifying potential enhancements, and indicating when it might be necessary to pivot.
Improving alignment
An online hybrid approach encourages better stakeholder alignment. The entire team can take part in the research process. No one needs to be left out. The whole team can get involved directly and work collectively from a common consumer understanding.
Building confidence
The immediacy of the experience—watching people give feedback in real time—engages team members and makes the learnings more tangible and memorable. With today’s AI-enhanced tools layered into the process, teams gain even more confidence through real-time summaries and clearer signals on what resonates, reinforcing that the findings are dependable and actionable.
Why Kantar Live is built for this moment
Kantar Live is designed to deliver fast, unfiltered consumer feedback in one seamless session — whether shaping early innovation ideas into more defined concepts, fine-tuning those concepts, or optimising early creative before moving to the next stage.
Up to 100 consumers take part in a single 60-minute live session, answering open-ended questions, reacting to stimuli, and voting on each other’s responses in real time. Clients observe live, ask probing questions as the session unfolds, and join an immediate expert-led debrief to determine clear next steps.
Qual and quant in perfect sync: Explore emotional depth and verify what matters most, all in one place, without trade-offs or switching tools.
AI-powered from start to finish: AI is embedded across the entire workflow, from recruitment fraud prevention to live probing and real-time summaries. It enables you to test hypotheses, refine questions, and explore what matters most while the session is still live.
Active engagement, not just observation: Kantar Live sessions are fast-paced, moderated conversations where participants share, react, and vote in real time, sparking interaction and creating momentum that makes insights more vivid and actionable.
The wisdom of the crowd captured live: Unlock people’s emotions, capture their immediate reactions, and quantify what resonates most through live voting.
Built on Kantar’s best thinking: Tap into the industry’s most trusted thinking, seamlessly embedded into your workflow, from proven brand equity frameworks to behavioural science.
Expert support that scales with you: Move efficiently and confidently through a project with step-by-step advice and assistance from our global experts.
Global reach, real-time speed: Connect with consumers in the moment—wherever they are—with the flexibility to match your timelines, without compromising on rigour.
In a world where change is accelerating, brands need timely insight that moves as fast as culture does, driven by real voices and rooted in real human perspectives. Real-time, hybrid research is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s the new standard for brand growth.
See how Kantar Live can bring real-time qual and quant together for your brand. Request a demo today.
