Using AI to rapidly analyse conversations in the US Heartburn Category

Performing analysis and strategic insights on over 100,000 public conversations and images for a global healthcare company.

The research before the research

A global healthcare company wanted to conduct research on consumers in the Heartburn category through our sister agency, STRAT7 Incite, with whom they’ve partnered many times. 

However, prior to the primary research stage beginning, the healthcare company wanted to uncover what unmet needs existed in the category and identify any emerging ones. 

Performing the pre-fieldwork task would enable the client to test hypotheses and develop an informed, evidence-based view of the category, which would sharpen the subsequent research. It would also capture the themes and exact language used to describe heartburn needs, rather than limiting the analysis to pre-defined keywords and themes. 

By using strat7.ai to rapidly collect, analyse and visualise unstructured data, coupled with our team’s ability to turn that data into actionable insights that guide strategic decisions, we were the perfect partner for this project.

 

Using strat7.ai, we collected and analysed >100,000 unique public conversations to quickly uncover unmet and emerging needs, as well as capture the voice of the customer.

Analysing 100,000 unique conversations

We used proprietary strat7.ai webscrapers and social media APIs to perform exhaustive data collection on Heartburn from publicly available online conversations. 

Over 100,000 unique conversations, including both text and images, were collected from multiple sources in the United States over from Jan 2021-Jan 2023. Using search queries around heartburn, this vast amount of data was scraped from online forums and various social media channels.

Collecting such an enormous quantity of data ensured we had a sample size that would yield more accurate results from the analysis that followed. 

The next step was to use the data to size the needs and symptoms. While generative AI tools like ChatGPT can also generate a list of needs, they can’t size them using the latest online conversations – but strat7.ai can. 

We used a ‘rules based’ approach to size a long list of needs and symptoms directly from previous research and insight reports which we’d received from the client. 

Each need had particular keywords associated with them, making them easy to cluster together. From there, analysing the data was easy because we could overlay the brands to see where each brand “plays”. 

Overlaying brands like this quickly established what need each heartburn medication was the ‘go to’ for. 

Reliable results informing future research

Our work helped our global healthcare client understand the main needs where they already played, as well as areas where they were behind the competition. It gave them access to a large structured dataset containing verbatim text and images of consumers language and thoughts – all tagged by need, symptom and brand. 

Not only did this insight provide the brand with a lot of context in the customer’s own voice, it also gave our quantitative researchers  at STRAT7 Incite a lot of information with which to write more targeted primary research questionnaires. In particular, the consumer language used to describe heartburn needs helped to generate consumer facing benefit statements, used as direct stimulus for the quant stage.

Uncover insight hiding in plain sight

Publicly available data is an opportunity hiding in plain sight. And AI can help you turn that unstructured data into a competitive advantage. 

Rapidly collect, analyse and visualise data from public or proprietary data. Then let our team of data scientists and market researchers turn it into actionable insights that guide strategic decisions. 

With strat7.ai, each use case is completely different. Speak to one of our specialists to find out how we can help you answer your business questions.

 

Want to learn more about the power of unstructured data?

Download our ebook today.

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Joe Lockey

Senior Analyst

Joe joined us after completing rotations across our consumer, services and health sectors, whilst gaining exposure to both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

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Alice Hedlund

Principal

Alice has experience in customer-centric growth, brand strategy and innovation at global scale. She specialises in brand transformation journeys, bridging the gap between business and brand strategy to create holistic and actionable plans for impactful growth.

Helen Donald

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Tom Carvell

Principal

Tom has a science background with a PhD in Materials Chemistry. He has spent most of his career working on in-house front-end innovation where he delivered mid/long term strategic projects for brands such as Durex, Scholl, Veet and KY. He is focussed on delivering pragmatic but provocative innovation strategy for CPG categories.

Manick Pratheeban

Senior Principal

Manick is a brand strategy and consumer insight specialist with 15+ years’ experience helping to grow some of the world’s biggest brands. He has a proven track record of translating trends, consumer, and market data into actionable insights to formulate growth strategies.

Kate Jones

Senior Principal

Kate has over a decade of experience in creating transformative strategies for customer-focused businesses. With a background in consumer insight and behaviour change across consumer health, packaged goods, leisure, banking and other sectors she focuses on elevating the customer experience to create human-centric innovations and foster impactful growth.

Jacob Gascoine-Becker

Partner

Jacob specialises in leveraging consumer research to inform investment strategy and business case development. A management consultant since 2014, he previously spent eight years working in ecommerce and digital marketing.

Ines Achabal

Senior Analyst

Ines is inately curious and creative. She is known for her expansive thinking when exploring client challenges and elevating the visual quality of outputs to maximise their impact.

Helene Mills

Partner

Helene has 20+ years’ experience advising business leaders and investors on growth strategy based upon consumer and market intelligence. Her particular specialism lies in leisure, retail, food and beverage sectors.

Helen Donald

Helen Donald

Partner

Helen has consulted businesses at different stages of growth across a variety of sectors, specialising in consumer packaged goods and consumer healthcare. She is an adept strategist, bringing clarity to the most complex of situations and connecting dots to create rich, future-proofed platforms for innovation, brand positioning and growth.

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Allan Chen

Senior Principal

Allan’s core skillset provides an analytical and commercial lens to address client challenges. He started his career as an actuary, and since then has held a broad range of strategic roles, improving performance across the private and public sector.

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Björn Dufwenberg

Managing Director​

Björn has 15+ years’ experience in insight-driven transformation, across management consulting, as well as brand and innovation agency roles. Most recently he headed up the Customer-Led Transformation practice at PwC Sweden, until joining STRAT7 in 2021. He’s worked on global projects covering consumer goods, durables, spirits and beverages, retail, banking, and private equity.

Kamilla Dala

Senior Principal

Kamilla has 10+ years’ experience leading and implementing insight-driven transformation within global matrix organisations in durable and consumable goods. Areas of expertise cover segmentation, uncovering and translating actionable consumer insights within innovation, product development, brand positioning, strategy and marketing.