Marketers have access to more data than ever, but that abundance can sometimes pull us away from what truly drives consumer behavior: human motivation. I’ve spent my career studying why people make the choices they do (often irrationally) and helping brands connect those dots in ways that drive growth. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of research across categories like retail, entertainment, CPG, and technology, it’s this: You can’t automate curiosity.
When I first started out, I worked on the media agency side, long before digital dominated marketing budgets. Back then, all of our research focused on TV and print. I noticed I was spending all my free time online, but we weren’t studying online advertising at all. So I reached out to our digital media teams and asked, “If your partners are running research, can I be part of that?” That small step following my curiosity completely changed my career. I started publishing research on digital measurement, speaking at industry events, and eventually moving into platform-side roles at Twitter and Snapchat before joining Alter Agents. That willingness to fill the gap and meet a need turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Listening Is Still the Strongest Research Tool
Today, the gap has changed, but it still exists. We’re all swimming in data, yet marketers often struggle to translate it into understanding. I’ve found that some of the richest insights come not from dashboards or benchmarks but from slowing down and listening. Pause. Ask: “Tell me more about that.” Give space for stories to emerge. When you do, you uncover the messy, contradictory truths that no metric can show you.
In our work, we use every kind of tool, from mobile ethnographies to agile neuroscience, to get at what people think and feel. One of my favorite examples is the Immersion method, which tracks variable heart rate via a wearable to measure the release of oxytocin, the same hormone tied to memory and trust. When someone’s heart rate pattern changes as they interact with an ad or product, it signals that they’re encoding it into memory.
According to recent research published in the Psychology & Marketing journal, heart rate variability is “a promising tool for identifying and evaluating consumer psychophysiological responses to marketing stimuli … broadening opportunities for marketing researchers to improve real-time consumer experiences.” And in a blinded test that Immersion did with advertising giant BBDO, they found that neural signals are able to predict actions and what will happen in the market. That’s the kind of connection marketers crave: emotional engagement that drives real-world results.
Technology Should Bring Us Closer to People
Of course, AI is changing how we get there. We now use secure AI tools to analyze qualitative data such as transcripts, videos, and interviews to find themes faster. It doesn’t replace human judgment, but it lets researchers spend more time thinking deeply about why people behave the way they do. That’s what excites me most: using technology not to distance us from consumers but to get even closer to them.
At the same time, we can’t lose sight of what really matters. If I could throw one marketing metric in the garbage, it would be clicks. In my experience, clicks don’t represent people or motivations and can be wrongly conflated with these to incorrectly inform decisions. The overfocus on last-click data has trained entire industries to chase performance over perspective, ignoring, as a Fast Company article points out, earlier touchpoints in the shopper journey.
Clicks tell you what’s easy to measure, not what’s meaningful. When brands optimize only for what’s trackable, they miss the deeper story surrounding the relationships, values, and motivations that actually sustain loyalty.
What Today’s Audiences Really Expect
What’s clear from the variety of research we conduct around the globe is that shopper motivations are shifting. Especially among younger audiences, brand purpose still matters, but integrity matters more. In some of our recent research with Snapchat, we found that 70% of global Gen Zers say they would assign more status to a figure who advocates for causes on a global scale, and 60% said they only purchase items from brands whose values they agree with—and Gen Z would also spend more when values align.
It’s not enough to say the right thing. People (especially Gen Z) are looking to see if your brand has lived those values consistently. They’ve grown up in public forums, where taking a stand is the norm, and they expect the same from brands. Authenticity, consistency, and action now define credibility.
So where do marketers start?
- Listen deeply. Go beyond what consumers say to how they feel. Emotion reveals the “why” behind behavior and gives marketers richer direction than surface-level opinions ever could.
- Widen your focus. Stay curious and open to the unexpected. Insights have the most impact when you look past assumptions and allow patterns, tensions, and surprises to emerge naturally.
- Use technology and AI to speed the process, not skip the thinking. AI can process the data faster, but meaning still comes from human interpretation. Use it to clear the noise so your team can spend more time connecting dots and telling stories that matter.
- Rethink what you measure. Trade “clicks” for comprehension, understanding not just when people act, but how and why they decide. That’s the kind of knowledge that builds lasting relationships, not just temporary results.
At the end of the day, insights are about empathy. Whether you’re a researcher or a marketer, your job is to understand people in all their beautiful, irrational complexity. Let them talk. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Heather O’Shea is the Chief Research Officer of Alter Agents.