Inside Rakuten AI: Hidefumi Watanabe on how AI unlocks deeper consumer understanding

In this series, we sit down with Rakuten AI leaders for a deep dive into the stories behind this transformative technology and the inspiring individuals driving Rakuten’s vision of AI for all. Watch this interview and others in the Inside Rakuten AI series on our YouTube channel.

In the dynamic world of marketing research, understanding consumer behavior is paramount. Rakuten Insight, a leader in this field, is not just keeping pace with technological advancements but actively driving innovation, particularly through the strategic integration of AI.

As a company playing a fundamental role in the marketing research industry, Rakuten Insight’s mission revolves around delivering robust, evidence-based, and high-quality data to support critical business decisions.

Delivering high-quality, evidenced-based insights

Hidefumi Watanabe, Representative Director and President of Rakuten Insight and Rakuten Insight Global, shares how the company leverages its vast network and cutting-edge AI tools to provide unparalleled consumer insights to its clients.

“Rakuten Insight is a key player in the marketing research industry, and we conduct business by providing user and consumer insights to our clients,” Watanabe explains. “We provide valuable user-centric information specifically for clients launching new products or planning advertising campaigns. This information is absolutely essential for businesses looking to gauge how their initiatives are received in the market and how their products were used by consumers.”

The company achieves this through its extensive monitoring platform, which serves as a powerful resource for gathering diverse perspectives.

Overcoming client challenges with unrivaled scale

A significant differentiator for Rakuten Insight is its massive panel of survey respondents, which allows for highly granular research.

“Rakuten Insight has one of the Japanese industry’s largest survey panels, with approximately 2.2 million members,” Watanabe said. “This large number enables us to conduct surveys for very specific, niche segments and targets, providing robust and reliable results.”

Beyond traditional surveys, Rakuten Insight has innovated with services like R-Brand Lift Survey, which offers a more accurate measure of advertising effectiveness.

“R-Brand Lift Survey is a new service where we ask the same questions to people who have seen an ad and those who haven’t, using actual log data to determine ad exposure,” Watanabe clarifies. “Previously, we had to ask in surveys if respondents had seen a certain ad. Now, with log data, we can objectively determine exposure. This significantly improves data quality, as we can verify responses that were previously difficult to confirm.”

This approach addresses a long-standing challenge in advertising measurement, ensuring that clients receive truly impactful insights. The sheer scale of Rakuten Insight’s monitoring base also allows them to gather sufficient sample sizes for even the most niche campaigns.

“Because we have the industry’s largest number of survey participants, we can secure sufficient sample sizes even for niche advertisements,” Watanabe notes. “For instance, we’ve heard feedback that for surveys where other companies could only gather 10-15 samples, Rakuten Insight was able to collect over 30 samples, making it a valid quantitative study.”

The R-Brand Lift Survey service has been operational for around five years, evolving with the market. The rise of video advertising, in particular, has fueled the demand for this type of precise ad measurement. As the number of video ads increases, the need to survey people who have actually been exposed to video ads also grows.

In addtion to brands, media companies can also use this data to demonstrate the value of their advertising products to brands wishing to advertise. In this way, the demand for surveys using log data in paralled with growth in the video advertising market.

AI Chat Interview: Revolutionizing in-depth research

Rakuten Insight’s commitment to innovation is strikingly evident in its adoption of AI, particularly with the AI Chat Interview service. This initiative addresses the limitations of traditional qualitative research.

“Our services have three key pillars: Online research (web surveys), the R-Brand Lift Survey and interview research,” Watanabe explains. “While traditional interviews were conducted by humans, we developed a new service called AI Chat Interview.”

The core strength of interviews lies in their ability to delve deeper than surveys, uncovering the “why” behind consumer behavior. “Interview research’s greatest strength, compared to surveys, is its ability to ask in-depth questions. We can ask respondents follow up questions to know why they think that or what were the reasons behind their actions,” Watanabe emphasizes. “While a survey can accurately determine if a product was purchased, getting into the ‘why’ and the ‘feelings’ behind it is often difficult with short text boxes, leading to superficial answers.”

However, traditional interviews are resource-intensive and limited in scale. For example, one-on-one in-depth interviews are typically with just one respondent at a time and group interviews are with around a maximum of 30-40 people each time. Conducting these on a scale of hundreds or thousands of people is simply not feasable.

“The AI Chat Interview service leverages the power of AI to ask questions to multiple users. We can conduct hundreds of interviews simultaneously, and transcription is instant, leading to faster delivery,” Watanabe states. “AI Chat Interview can compensate for the weaknesses of traditional surveys and the limitations of human interviews.”

Launched in the latter half of last year, the service initially took time to gain traction but has since seen remarkable growth, with increasinlgy positive reviews from clients leading to our March sales surging tenfold compared to January.

Enhancing AI accuracy and user experience

To ensure the highest quality of AI-driven insights, Rakuten Insight has strategically integrated human expertise into the AI development process.

“Previously, the department responsible for AI products developed prompt tools, but now  we have involved professional interview researchers in prompt creation,” Watanabe reveals. “By infusing human interview know-how into our AI prompts, we have significantly improved accuracy.”

The user response to AI Chat Interview has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly for sensitive topics.

“For interviews about personal and sensitive topics, such as illness, respondents may feel hesitant about sharing freely with another human. Whereas AI Chat Interview seems to reduce this apprehension, making users feel their privacy is protected,” Watanabe observes. “The ability to conduct a large number of interviews in a short timeframe adds a lot of value.”

The future vision: AI as a cultural driving force

Looking ahead, Watanabe sees AI as more than just a tool; it’s a fundamental aspect of Rakuten Insight’s organizational culture and future growth.

“I believe the advancement of AI at our company is primarily driven by our organizational culture,” Watanabe reflects. “I have found many of our members are extremely proactive and passionate, and our data analysis business has great synergy with AI. We want to strengthen this culture of leveraging AI, as I believe it’s paramount to making our organization strong and our business best positioned among competitors.”

The vision extends beyond optimizing the research process to impacting the client’s entire decision-making journey.

“In the future, we aim to utilize AI not just in the research process but across the client’s entire decision-making process, supporting higher-quality decisions,” Watanabe concludes. “Ultimately, in the marketing domain, we want to create a system where data directly impacts client decision-making.”

Pioneering the next era of marketing research

Rakuten Insight is at the forefront of transforming the marketing research industry. By combining its unparalleled network of respondents with innovative AI solutions like the AI Chat Interview and the R-Brand Lift Survey solutions, the company is not only overcoming traditional research limitations but also empowering businesses with deeper, more accurate, and faster consumer insights.

Watanable outlined the ongoing evolution of Rakuten Insight, “In the marketing research industry, we originally saw our mission as driving innovation through online surveys. Traditionally, surveys were conducted via phone, paper, mail, or in-person visits, but now most of that has been replaced by the internet. Our next goal is to become the industry’s frontrunner by leveraging AI, and we intend to steadily advance our business in that direction.”

Moving forward, Watanabe’s team is committed to integrating AI into their core culture and processes to position Rakuten Insight as a true leader, poised to drive the next wave of innovation in understanding the consumer landscape.