9 Best AI Tools for Market Research (for Different Use Cases)

In this article, we’ll discuss the best AI tools for market research across various use cases:

• AI-powered survey creation: Instead of building a survey from scratch, you enter a prompt and the AI generates a complete survey for you. From there, you can refine it manually or through chatting with the AI. Things that once required manual setup, like configuring skip logic and conditional branching, now just require describing the parameters you want.

• AI moderator tools: An AI moderator conducts conversations with respondents at scale. When someone provides an answer, the AI follows up with probing questions to uncover the “why” behind their response. The best tools also help you analyze key themes and patterns from this qualitative data.

• AI data analysis: These tools let you take existing data (e.g., surveys, interviews) and use AI to get to your insights faster. They’re not a replacement for manual analysis, but they reduce the time it takes to get to the finish line.

• AI-powered industry intelligence: Enter a prompt describing your industry, research objective, and target market, and these AI tools generate relevant market intelligence for you.

Here’s a brief overview of each tool we’ll discuss:

1. Pollfish: Our powerful DIY survey platform, which offers an AI Survey Builder (save significant time on survey design), Conversational AI (conduct AI-moderated conversations with respondents at scale), and AI Report (extract key insights from your surveys in minutes, not days).
2. Listen Labs: AI-led user interview platform that offers discussion guide creation, fielding, interviewing, analysis, and more.
3. Outset: AI-moderated research platform that lets you interview respondents at scale via video, voice, or text.
4. CoLoop: AI-powered qualitative research platform where you can run sheets, ask questions across moderated IDs, and conduct open-ended analysis.
5. Yabble: Offers several AI solutions for market research, including AI summaries of open-ended questions.
6. DoReveal: AI data analysis tool that is especially useful for faster, deeper qual analysis.
7. Notably: Synthesis platform for user research that helps you turn qualitative data into insights.
8. Manus: AI tool that lets you input a research object and target market, then automatically generates a comprehensive market research report.
9. Optimo: AI-powered market research tool where you enter your industry and get a report with the ideal demographic for your business and how to reach them.

Let’s dive in.

1. Pollfish

Pollfish is our DIY survey tool, renowned for powerful AI capabilities and high survey data quality, as we discuss in our article on the 3 Survey Data Quality Issues Sabotaging Your Research (& How We Fix Them).

In this article, we’ll discuss:

• 3 powerful AI capabilities that Pollfish offers:

• • AI Survey Builder: Lets you build a complete survey in minutes through a simple conversational prompt and customize it to your exact needs. With over 40,000 AI surveys already created on Pollfish, this tool has quickly become a go-to.
  • Conversational AI: A survey question type where an AI moderator conducts a natural, back-and-forth conversation with each respondent, delivering rich qualitative insights at scale.
  • AI Survey Analysis: Speeds up reporting by generating a complete, context-aware analysis of your survey results in minutes.

• Key benefits of choosing Pollfish, backed by customer quotes:
  • Rigorous data quality measures for survey results you can rely on.
  • Transparent pay-per-response pricing model with no hidden fees.
  • Fast turnaround time ranging from a few hours for general population surveys to a few days for more niche audiences.
  • Complimentary support from seasoned market researchers.
  • Intuitive & easy to use, with a minimal learning curve.

Note: Sign up for a free Pollfish account (no credit card required). You can inquire about our full-service offering, fulfilled through our parent company, Prodege, where we handle the entire process for you, including survey programming, sampling and fielding, data analysis, and reporting.

AI Survey Builder

What it is: Pollfish’s AI Survey Builder revolutionizes market research by letting you build a complete survey specified to your exact needs in minutes.

The benefit: You no longer have to design surveys from scratch, helping you get to the finish line faster. Plus, the AI can suggest unique questions you may not have thought of (leading to better survey design and richer insights).

As some of our customers shared on Trustpilot:

“I’m loving Pollfish’s AI-generated questions — not only are they accurate and time saving, but it even came up with better survey queries than I could have thought of! With a quick poll of 250 respondents in just one working day, targeting my niche market was a breeze. The customer service team is super responsive too for those more complex enquiries about the tool and criteria. All in all this experience has been way easier (and cheaper) than any other ‘big players’ out there.”
– Read the full review here

“A great product with a robust interface that cleverly uses AI to enable the user to create the most efficient and effective survey based on their needs. I’ll be using this regularly moving forward when I need direct market feedback, and fast.”
– Read the full review here

“I rarely give 5 stars, but this one is well worth it. The interface is super easy whether you create it from scratch or use AI and the value is bar none. I had calls with other companies that wanted to charge me 1000’s and take days to complete. Instead, I signed up with Pollfish, created my survey in less than 30 minutes, and had all 100 respondents in a couple of hours. Saved me so much time and money. Worth every penny!”
– Read the full review here

“We had been looking for a pay-as-you-go insights platform and this one didn’t disappoint! Has a ton of capabilities and the AI suggestions are actually helpful.”
– Read the full review here

❇️ How It Works

The first step is simple: just type your survey objective into the AI Survey Builder.

For example, you might ask:

• How can I compete better against major coffee shop chains? (per the example above)
• Why do customers choose one neighborhood gym over another when prices are similar?
• What would convince customers to try a new skincare brand instead of the one they already use?

And any other survey objective you might have.

With just one click, you’ll receive a fully developed survey, ready to launch directly from your account:

Once you’ve generated a survey, you have the freedom to customize it to your exact preferences, all through conversational chat with the AI:

For example, you could ask questions like:

• Can you shorten the survey to under 5 minutes without losing key insights?
• Can you add a follow-up question when someone selects “very unlikely to purchase”?
• Can you split this question into two, one focused on price and one on quality?
• Could you translate the survey to Spanish?

❇️ Includes Advanced Research Methodologies and Question Types

Our AI Survey Builder supports a variety of advanced research methodologies, including:

• A/B Testing
• Conjoint Analysis
• MaxDiff
• Van Westendorp Pricing Analysis

It also supports a wide range of question types, including:

• Single Selection
• Multiple Selection
• Numeric Open-ended
• Text Open-ended
• Rating
• Ranking
• Sliders
• MaxDiff (Maximum Difference Scaling)
• Conjoint Analysis

Just select the type of survey you’d like to create:

On the left, you’ll find a dropdown with options for:

• Main question types
• Conjoint method
• MaxDiff method

❇️ Effortlessly Apply Complex Survey Logic via AI

Another benefit of our AI Survey Builder is the ability to easily apply sophisticated conditional logic just by chatting with the AI.

You could ask:

• “Can you show Q6 only to respondents who rated their satisfaction 3 or lower in Q5?”
• “If someone answers ‘Yes’ to Q3, send them to Q4; if they answer ‘No’, send them to Q7.”
• “Can you add conditional branching so repeat customers see different questions than first-time buyers?”

And more — these are just a few examples.

Conversational AI

What it is: Conversational AI is a type of survey question that engages respondents via an AI chat that feels like talking to a real person. However, because it’s powered by AI, it can run at scale with thousands of respondents simultaneously.

This yields richer, more nuanced insights than multiple-choice or open-ended questions can.

❇️ When to Use Conversational AI

Conversational AI is best for any question where the “why” matters more than the “what,” such as:

• Brand sentiment or perception
• Post-experience feedback
• Concept or creative testing
• Exploring motivations, habits, or attitudes

For example, you could ask, “What frustrations, if any, do you experience when shopping for laundry detergent?”

Instead of a shallow response, Conversational AI helps you uncover more in-depth insights by asking follow-up questions such as:

• “Can you tell me more about what makes that frustrating for you?”
• “When did you first notice this issue?”
• “How does that affect which brand you choose?”
• “Have you found any workarounds or alternatives?”
• “What would an ideal solution look like for you?”
• “Does this frustration change depending on where you shop or who you’re buying for?”

What makes it special: You receive rich, qualitative insights without the traditional cost and hassle. And even if you do run IDIs or focus groups, AI-moderated surveys make a great complement, surfacing insights you might not have uncovered otherwise.

❇️ How It Works

Simply insert a Conversational AI question (or multiple) into your survey the same way you’d add any other question type. You can even create a single-question survey consisting of only a Conversational AI question.

Setting goals and objectives: To set up a Conversational AI question, you’ll need to set a primary objective:

You’ll also need to add between 1 and 6 sub-goals (either manually or with help from our AI question builder). These will help guide the AI in shaping the conversation and extracting relevant responses:

For example, your primary objective might be: “Understand how survey participants are adapting their spending habits in response to rising grocery prices.”

While your sub-goals could be:

• Goal 1: Explore which product categories consumers are cutting back on versus prioritizing.

• Goal 2: Identify shifts toward discounts, promotions, or loyalty programs when choosing brands.

• Goal 3: Understand how price increases are influencing store choice (e.g., premium grocers vs. discount retailers).

• Goal 4: Assess increased consideration of private label or store-brand alternatives over national brands.

At the end of each question, the AI will evaluate the response. Possible outcomes include:

• If the response is deemed successful, the AI will proceed to the next question.

• If the response is considered of insufficient quality, nonsensical, or unrelated, the participant will be disqualified.

• If a participant responds with a one-word answer that doesn’t address what the AI is trying to learn, the AI will prompt them to elaborate, ensuring it gathers meaningful information.

• If participants provide information relevant to multiple goals while answering a single question, the AI will recognize this and avoid asking repetitive questions, creating a more seamless experience for the participant.

❇️ Getting Results

For each respondent, the Conversational AI will analyze the answers and provide several types of summaries (found on your results page):

• Objective summary per respondent
• Summary per goal per respondent
• Summaries for selected respondents (Objective and Goals)

The full conversation transcripts will also be downloadable as an XLS file.

You can learn more about Conversational AI in this article, and read our Conversational AI Help Guide for full, step-by-step instructions. Our support team is also available 24/7 via live chat or live demo to help you get started.

AI Survey Analysis

In this section, we’ll offer a brief overview of Pollfish’s AI Reports feature. For a deeper dive, see this article.

What it is: Pollfish’s AI Reports feature automatically generates a complete analysis of your survey responses, reducing manual effort and drastically decreasing the time it takes to go from collecting data to making decisions.

You get:

• An executive summary for high-level stakeholders
• An in-depth report with evidence, charts, and takeaways

View this sample AI Report to see the feature in action.

Included at no additional cost: Most competitors charge substantial fees for AI analysis, but with Pollfish, AI Reports are included for all users at no extra charge.

❇️ How It Works

Pollfish’s AI report feature goes beyond simply summarizing charts to understanding the why behind your research.

Here’s how:

• Contextual Understanding: Going beyond just summarizing charts, AI Reports analyzes your questionnaire structure, answer options, logic, and quotas to understand the intent behind it.

• Automated Statistical Analysis: The AI automatically computes and highlights meaningful differences across key segments such as age, gender, and region.

• NLP for Open-Ended Questions: AI Reports uses NLP to cluster themes, surface representative quotes, detect sentiment, and link verbatim responses back to key drivers.

• Instant Generation: In one click, AI Reports drafts a complete two-part report (Executive Summary + in-depth deep dive).

❇️ Use Cases for AI Reports

AI Reports shine in use cases such as:

• Concept and Creative Testing: Identify top-performing concepts with supporting rationale and representative quotes.

• Pricing and Packaging: Surface optimal price points and segment-specific preferences to inform go-to-market strategy.

• Market Landscaping: Analyze brand awareness, consideration, and competitive positioning with narrative summaries.

❇️ How to Generate an AI Report in Pollfish

1. Create your survey: Use AI Survey Builder to set an objective, draft questions, and apply complex survey logic. Be sure to add at least one open-ended question to get qualitative themes and quotes in your report.

2. Select your audience: Define your target audience, add screener questions, and set quotas for segments you’ll compare in analysis (e.g., comparing responses by age group or user type).

3. Collect responses: Field your study and monitor incoming responses and data quality in real time from your dashboard.

4. Once your survey is complete, generate your AI Report:
   • Go to your survey dashboard
   • Select “See Results”
   • From the results dashboard, select the “AI Report” button:

5. View your report: Your executive summary and detailed analysis will be generated within minutes. You can view an example of an AI Report here.

6. Share your report: Share via link or download as PDF. Individual charts can be exported as PDF, PNG, JPEG, or SVG.

In addition to these powerful AI features, Pollfish also offers several other notable benefits, which we discuss below (with customer quotes).

Additional Benefits of Pollfish, Backed by Customer Quotes

Rigorous Data Quality Measures

Pollfish is renowned for our dedication to high-quality data, which we discuss more in our article on 3 Survey Data Quality Issues Sabotaging Your Research (& How We Fix Them).

Through our parent company, Prodege, we own and nurture our own first-party respondent communities, so you can be confident in your data quality.

As several customers shared on Trustpilot:

“The most important point to make is that I trust the responses of my survey. My target audience was very specific and I could tell that the responses were legitimately coming [from] subjects in my target audience.”
– Read the full review here

“Each time I use this service I am blown away by the speed with which the responses come in and with the detail which most of them include. You can tell that the respondents take this very seriously. They must really enjoy doing it.”
– Read the full review here

Transparent Pay-per-Response Pricing Model

Unlike other platforms that charge monthly subscription costs or hidden fees, our pay-per-response pricing model ensures you always know exactly how much you’ll be charged — before even signing up. Our pricing calculator updates in real-time as you build your survey, so there are no surprises.

For more info and to calculate your survey costs via our pricing calculator, see this page.

As several customers shared on Trustpilot:

“They charge based on the completed response. It is very fair and transparent. As a researcher, I have used many survey platforms, but they are the best so far.”
– Read the full review here

“The dollar amount they quote you in their cost calculator tool, and the number they show when you’re developing the survey, is the number you pay. I was burned multiple times by [competitor] charging me unexpected amounts and making it difficult to quit an expensive subscription. I’m so happy to have found Pollfish as an alternative. Their support team also responds VERY quickly to chat messages and has been tremendously helpful the few times I had questions.”
– Read the full review here

“The pricing is clear and transparent from the beginning. The results come quickly and can be downloaded in different formats and with different filters. What we like most is the ability to filter the results and analyze them separately for each segment. We highly recommend this platform.”
– Read the full review here

Fast Turnaround Time

We own and operate our first-party respondent networks, which allows us to deliver incredibly fast turnaround times. Survey results come in as little as a few hours for general population surveys (e.g., U.S. adults over 18) or a few days for more niche audiences (e.g., Gen Z college students who are working part-time).

Review for a general population survey:

“I needed a 25 question survey answered, and was able to get 500 completed surveys in 8 hours with Pollfish. The presentation of the results is very impressive and the demographics information Pollfish provided is invaluable.”
– Read the full review here

Review for a specialized niche:

“I’m amazed at how quickly the platform was able to deliver rich, segmentable data from over 500 respondents. I had feature-ready insights in only 3 days.”
– Read the full review here

Complimentary Customer Service From Seasoned Market Researchers

Our team provides complimentary advanced support that goes beyond basic technical assistance. You can get expert help with survey design, audience selection, and data analysis — 24/7 via chat or phone, including evenings and weekends.

As some of our customers mentioned on Trustpilot:

“The customer service team is super responsive too for those more complex enquiries about the tool and criteria. All in all this experience has been way easier (and cheaper) than any other ‘big players’ out there.”
– Read the full review here

“I love this product. I feel like it gives me enterprise grade market survey tech at a consumer price. Highly recommend. I love how responsive the customer support team is.”
– Read the full review here

“The customer service I received was fantastic. Brilliant guidance that helped get high-quality results. I was really pleased with the outcome and highly recommend using them.”
– Read the full review here

Intuitive, Easy-to-Use Platform

Our suite of AI features revolutionizes survey creation and analysis, significantly reducing time and cost.

• AI Survey Builder enables quick survey creation for users at any experience level.
• Conversational AI lets you surface qualitative-style, in-depth insights at scale without the cost, time, and hassle of traditional tools.
• AI Reports auto-generates stakeholder-level analysis in minutes.

You can also choose from prebuilt templates for common use cases or build custom surveys using our intuitive, step-by-step interface.

As several of our customers noted:

“Pollfish is probably the single easiest software I’ve ever used. The drag and drop builder is great itself, but the template library also has anything we ever need, so you rarely have to design anything from scratch. The templates are also designed very well, we usually pick one, do a couple edits, and deploy. The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes.”
– Read the full review here

“The surveys were easy to set up, allowed me to select my very specific target and launched right away. Within a couple of days I had my results in an easy to interpret, actionable format well within my budget.”
– Read the full review here

“I have used this platform ~10x over time and find the process easy, their review process helpful, and the insights I get from people valuable as I work through different product concepts in market research.”
– Read the full review here

Interested in Learning More About Pollfish?

• Create a free account (no credit card required)

• Visit our pricing page, where you can get an instant pricing estimate for your DIY surveys, and learn more about our full-service and enterprise offerings.

• Inquire about our full-service offering fulfilled through our parent company, Prodege

2. Listen Labs

Listen Labs is an AI-moderated interview platform.

Some of their use cases include:

• Consumer Journey Map: Track real customer journeys

• Multi-Market Segmentation: Conduct interviews in 50+ languages

• Brand Tracker: Analyze perception shifts over time

• Concept & Prototype Testing: Learn which concepts will break out

• Creative Testing: Quickly test messaging and visuals

• Usability Testing: Validate product ease-of-use

Overall, it’s a solid tool to streamline your research projects and reduce the time-consuming tasks associated with traditional methods.

3. Outset

Outset is an AI-moderated research platform.

Some of their use cases include:

• Usability Testing: Observing how users interact with a product to find areas for improvement

• Concept Testing: Getting feedback on early ideas or prototypes before investing in full development

• Consumer Insights: Understanding consumer needs, motivations, and behaviors to inform strategic decisions

• UX Evals: Evaluating how people actually experience and value AI through real, open-ended interactions

Overall, it’s a solid tool for research teams to gain market insights, and can help you make data-driven decisions.

4. CoLoop AI

CoLoop AI is an AI-powered qualitative research platform.

Some of their use cases include:

• Concept testing: Test and validate new concepts

• Message testing: Test marketing messages and communications

• Brand positioning: Research and refine brand positioning

• Customer experience: Understand and improve customer experience

• Market entry: Research for entering new markets

• Pricing research: Research pricing strategies and models

Overall, it’s a solid tool for AI in market research. They offer powerful AI models and can help you make more informed decisions.

5. Yabble

Yabble is an AI solution for market research, and they particularly excel at AI summaries of open-ended questions.

Some of their solutions include:

• Virtual Audiences: Generates AI-driven personas and simulated audience responses to help explore consumer behavior and questions.

• Gen: An AI research assistant that lets you query and interact with your structured and unstructured data in a conversational chat format.

• Summarize: Automatically condenses long-form content such as text, audio, and video into concise summaries.

• Count: Processes unstructured text (e.g., responses, comments) to identify themes, sub-themes, and sentiment.

Overall, it’s a solid tool with advanced AI capabilities, and it can help you glean actionable insights.

6. DoReveal

DoReveal is an AI solution for faster, deeper qualitative research.

Some of their features include:

• Thematic Insights: Identify recurring themes and patterns across qualitative data to organize and summarize key topics from conversations.

• Personas: Define and describe participant types or user segments based on qualitative data.

• Journey Maps: Visualize how people interact with a product or service over time.

• Jobs-to-be-Done: Interpret what tasks or goals participants are trying to accomplish with a product or behavior.

• Emotional Laddering: Probe deeper into the motivations and emotional drivers behind participants’ responses.

Overall, it’s a solid tool for understanding market trends and can help with data collection.

7. Notably

Notably is an AI-powered synthesis platform for user research and gathering qualitative insights.

Some of their use cases include:

• Product research: Organize and synthesize user interviews, usability tests, and feedback to identify patterns related to product needs, pain points, and feature opportunities.

• Market research: Analyze qualitative inputs such as interviews and open-ended responses to understand customer perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes across segments. Powered by intelligent algorithms.

• Academic research: Support qualitative analysis workflows by coding, tagging, and synthesizing interview or study data for research and reporting purposes.

• Agencies: Help research and insights teams manage large volumes of qualitative data through automation and produce structured outputs like themes, summaries, and reports for clients.

Overall, it’s a solid AI product to optimize your market research findings and streamline decision-making.

8. Manus

Manus is an artificial intelligence tool that lets you input a research object and target market, then automatically generates a comprehensive market research report. It lets you choose the most suitable framework (e.g., SWOT, BMC, PESTEL, 7ps), and presents the analysis as a professionally designed, interactive webpage.

Some of their key features and capabilities include:

• Fast, scalable market research: Deliver comprehensive, professional-grade market research reports in minutes.

• Multi-source analysis at scale: Process hundreds of data sources simultaneously.

• Real-time market signals: Analyze social media sentiment, competitor pricing changes, regulatory updates, and consumer behavior patterns

9. Optimo

Per the above example, with Optimo, you enter your industry, and it conducts market research to provide the ideal demographic for your business (and how to reach them).

Some of their key features and capabilities for market research include:

• Audience identification: Determine who your target audience is and what they care about.

• Demographic insights: Understand key audience characteristics with minimal manual research.

• Accessible insights: Use the tool freely with unlimited access to audience data and analysis.

Interested in Learning More About Pollfish?

• Create a free account (no credit card required)
• Inquire about our full-service offering through our parent company, Prodege