Ester Marchetti, Co-Founder at Bolt Insight, on Why AI-Driven Consumer Insights Matter for FMCG

Fast-moving consumer goods brands are under constant pressure: innovation cycles are accelerating, consumer loyalty is increasingly fluid, and the ability to spot early signals from the market often determines whether a product succeeds or fails. In a conversation with The Supply Chainer, Ester Marchetti, Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at Bolt Insight, explained why she believes AI-powered qualitative research is becoming central to how brands adapt.

“Traditional qualitative research has always delivered richness,” Marchetti says, “but it’s often slow, difficult to scale and inconsistent across projects.” BoltChatAI, the platform she helped develop, takes a different approach. Instead of relying on static questionnaires, it runs real-time, AI-moderated interviews that probe and adapt as respondents answer. “What sets us apart is the way our AI listens, learns from each response, and probes further — just as a trained moderator would, but with the speed and consistency technology enables.”

Respondents aren’t limited to one format. They can answer through text, video, voice, or even images, which Marchetti argues leads to more natural and emotionally rich feedback. And features such as Dynamic Personas and Meta-Analysis keep working after the study finishes. “Even when the research is done, there are still more layers you can dig through,” she notes.

Ester Marchetti, Co-Founder and Head of Innovation at Bolt Insight

That capability has already changed how some FMCG companies refine products. Marchetti recalls one brand looking to strengthen its innovation pipeline by identifying early signals for new product development. “Using BoltChatAI, the team launched rapid qualitative engagements across a broad demographic spread in the U.S.,” she says. “Our AI moderator facilitated one-to-one conversations that explored perceptions, unmet needs and emotional responses. By using features such as stimuli uploads and dynamic probing, the brand was able to iterate on multiple product ideas in parallel, significantly accelerating concept refinement.” The result, she adds, was “a faster, more cost-efficient route to insight that enabled smarter decisions at pace.”

For Marchetti, this points to a broader shift. “FMCG innovation cycles are speeding up, but understanding consumer needs hasn’t always kept pace,” she explains. “AI-driven qual changes that by putting consumer voice directly into the innovation process, fast and at scale. Our platform captures not just what people say, but why they say it. That level of depth makes the difference between good and great innovation.”

Another pressing issue is consumer loyalty. “Loyalty today is far more fluid,” Marchetti says. “Consumers are influenced by values, identity, experience and price sensitivity in ways that shift constantly. One of the biggest challenges is connecting the dots across these drivers to understand what truly builds emotional loyalty, not just repeat purchase.”

Here again, she sees AI playing a role. “AI helps by revealing patterns across large volumes of qualitative data, surfacing themes around trust, product relevance or brand fit. Our Dynamic Personas learn and evolve over time, so you can explore how motivations change by market or segment. Brands can interact directly with these personas to ask, for example, why a certain message resonates or what’s causing churn in a particular category.”

Above all, Marchetti emphasizes speed. “Real-time feedback has gone from a nice-to-have to a strategic necessity. In fast-moving categories like FMCG, waiting weeks for insights just isn’t viable anymore. Businesses need to sense and respond to market shifts as they happen.”

That’s where platforms like BoltChatAI come in, she argues. “Our platform provides instant, AI-moderated responses with live probing. Clients can explore data while fieldwork is still running, adapt questions mid-stream and get full thematic and sentiment analysis within hours. It’s an always-on engine for staying close to your consumer, whether you’re launching a campaign or refining product strategy.”

As our interview wrapped up, Marchetti summed up her perspective simply: “Consumer voice is no longer something you can afford to hear only at the end of a project. Embedding it throughout the innovation process is the only way to stay relevant in a market defined by speed, complexity, and change.”