By Lyndall Spooner, Founder and CEO, 5D
Lyndall was Chair of ESOMAR Congress 2025
“If you had to rebuild your industry from scratch, how much would you keep? And how much would you change? That was the challenge put to consumer insights and market researchers at the recent global ESOMAR Congress.
“It’s a provocative question, but it captures where the insights industry stands right now. Like many sectors, we’re at a crossroads, facing three powerful tensions: passionate researchers devoted to their craft; companies under pressure to deliver insights faster and cheaper; and a world undergoing unprecedented cultural, geopolitical, technological and psychological change.
“Now is the time to reimagine how the industry works and what it delivers. To reimagine means letting go of the past, having the confidence to think differently, challenging assumptions, identifying what’s new and emerging, and being bold enough to step beyond what feels familiar.
“But here’s the catch. All progress requires change, but not all change is progress.
“Innovation that weakens trust, reduces accuracy or dilutes understanding isn’t progress. Should we accept new research practices that achieve only 70% of current accuracy, simply because they’re faster or cheaper? We each have a responsibility to ensure change moves the industry forward, not backwards.
“The purpose of reimagining should be to deepen understanding, not reduce it. In a world that’s more complex than ever, the goal must be reinvention that brings clarity through insight, not confusion through haste or, worse, misleading findings. The fundamentals of good research – well-thought-out hypotheses, thoughtful questioning, clever problem-solving and rigorous analysis – remain the backbone of robust, actionable insights.
“At this year’s Congress, many inspiring presentations explored the “why” behind human behaviour in creative, human-centred ways. They embraced complexity instead of simplifying it. They guided respondents through journeys of self-discovery, revealing the deeper motivations and emotions shaping modern lived experience.
“In market research, the “why” has always been the north star. Of the five Ws – who, what, when, where, why – the “why” remains both the most important and the hardest to answer. To understand why people do what they do, choose what they choose, and believe what they believe, you must go beyond surface responses. As all good researchers know, respondents often can’t articulate their true motivations without being taken on a journey of deep reflection.
“The modern “why” is layered and intricate. That’s what makes reimagining the industry so exciting. Researchers are strategic thinkers, creative explorers and empathetic listeners. They’re disruptors and visionaries. Complexity isn’t the enemy; it’s raw material. To understand the modern consumer is to accept there is no single average, no straight line, no simple model. The world resists being reduced, and that’s precisely what makes being a researcher meaningful.
“Technology, particularly AI, offers extraordinary new tools. But tools alone don’t create understanding. Much of the frenzy around AI is fuelled by FOMO. The solution isn’t AI itself. It’s using imagination and empathy to ask questions technology cannot, questions that uncover something it has never seen before.
“To remain better than technology at generating insight, we must go deeper into the “why” – into lived experience, human intuition, emotion and culture. It’s about innovating with integrity, experimenting with purpose and being comfortable with discomfort. That’s where growth happens.
“Reimagination isn’t about abandoning the craft. It’s about elevating it. The world will never be simple, but the role of research has never been more vital: to illuminate the complexity of human life in ways that inspire understanding and drive action.”