Why We're Building Synthetic Consumers

If you've ever sat through a new product concept meeting, you've probably seen this scene play out. There are far more ideas than there are slots for formal research. Time and budget are limited. So the team quickly shelves the ideas that haven't been fully explored and keeps only the two or three that look most promising.

That's not the wrong call — it's a practical decision. But something gets lost along the way. The concept that would have resonated with just a slightly different framing. The message that would have landed powerfully with one specific target. The idea that seemed lukewarm at first but would have come alive in a different combination. All of these can get discarded far too early.

This is exactly why Opensurvey is talking about synthetic consumers: to open up more possibilities before the decisions that matter, and to narrow down toward better questions worth verifying.

Market decisions still require real consumer data

Synthetic consumers exist to explore more possibilities and prepare for the next round of validation. When it comes to deciding whether to actually launch a product, you still need to verify consumer reactions through formal research.

The closer a question gets to an actual market choice — which concept people choose, what price they're willing to accept, which messages earn their trust and which make them hesitate — the more it needs to be confirmed with real consumers, directly.

Synthetic consumers widen the field before you decide

What synthetic consumers do is explore more possibilities before that judgment call. They don't lock in final answers. They help you prepare better candidates and better questions to bring into the next stage of validation.

In the early stages of new product development, the questions are still rough, there are too many candidates, and the team's perspectives often diverge. You can't send every idea straight to formal research. But if you narrow the field through internal meetings alone, only the thinking the team is already familiar with tends to survive.

Synthetic consumers fill the gap in between. They let you spread out more concepts quickly, compare reactions across candidates, and explore which expressions build anticipation and which raise doubt. From there, the candidates and questions you carry into the next validation become much sharper.

Synthetic panels compare; synthetic personas ask why

Under the umbrella concept of synthetic consumers, Opensurvey offers two distinct experiences: the synthetic panel and the synthetic persona.

The synthetic panel is about comparing the reactions of many consumers in numbers. Say you have 20 candidate concepts for a new product. The synthetic panel lets you quickly see which candidates are likely to draw relatively stronger reactions. What matters at this stage isn't predicting final launch success — it's narrowing down, with evidence, which candidates deserve to move on to the next round of validation.

The synthetic persona is about talking to a single consumer perspective and exploring the reasons behind reactions. When a concept looks appealing, why does it feel that way? Which expressions give pause? What concerns come up? What questions should the next study confirm?

In short: the synthetic panel compares what looks better, and the synthetic persona asks why it might feel that way.

Research in the AI era isn't about asking less

We don't believe research in the AI era should move only in the direction of "asking people less." It should move toward exploring more — in order to ask better questions.

There have always been possibilities we never got to test because of time and cost. We couldn't vary our ideas enough. We didn't have room to imagine how different targets might react. And it was hard to know whether the questions we put into a survey were truly the right ones.

Synthetic consumers can fill that gap. Before formal validation, you can experiment more, discard faster, and keep only the stronger candidates. As a result, the research that informs market decisions can focus on the questions that matter most.

Opensurvey is building synthetic consumers to explore more possibilities — and to ask consumers better questions.

That's why we're starting this category.