An Emphatic YES is the answer…and this question isn’t hypothetical — it’s the reality facing consumer insights professionals today.
While 71% of global researchers believe synthetic will make up more than half of all data collection within the next three years (GreenBook, 2025), a troubling disconnect remains between artificial efficiency and authentic understanding.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of market research, the temptation to embrace synthetic shortcuts has never been stronger. As budgets tighten and deadlines shrink, the allure of synthetic alternatives for consumer insights promises speed and convenience. But what is gained in efficiency is often lost in accuracy.
With consistently calibrated, VALIDATED surveys and connected consumer behaviors, there is an opportunity to use synthetic to enhance consumer understanding. But what direction is market research heading currently? Let’s explore that subject.
The Hidden Cost of Synthetic Shortcuts
Validated data isn’t optional — it’s the foundation of insights you can trust. Yet many brands are gambling with dubiously sourced synthetic alternatives, drawn by promises of speed, scale, and most importantly, lower cost.
Why? Because real data collection has challenges:
- Because real data collection has challenges:
- Pressure to deliver insights faster and cheaper
- Declining survey response rates
But these pressures don’t justify compromising on quality. According to a 2025 Solomon Partners survey, only 31% of researchers rate synthetic data results as “great” when it’s used as the sole source (Solomon Partners, 2025). The finding highlights a critical gap: synthetic data can support research, but it struggles to replace the depth and reliability of validated consumer insights.
This gap matters not just for brands, but for the broader research ecosystem. As synthetic data scales, many consumer data providers are experimenting with modeled profiles to feed machine learning datasets to fill gaps. Yet these approaches often come at the expense of accuracy — the very quality that makes insights actionable and trustworthy.
The Validated Data Advantage: Measurable Results
By contrast, organizations that use high-quality consumer data — not synthetic or AI-generated approximations — consistently see insights synthetic data can’t match.
In one comparative study by Emporia Research, real B2B survey respondents were contrasted with AI-generated synthetic personas. The results showed significant discrepancies in sentiments and decision-making preferences, with synthetic responses consistently missing the nuance of real human behavior (Emporia Research, 2025).
When synthetic data misses nuance, businesses miss opportunities. Validated consumer data grounds strategy in reality — translating directly into more confident decisions and better outcomes.
Why Quality Consumer Data Matters More Than Ever
The risks of synthetic shortcuts become even clearer when we look at what validated data uniquely provides.
Unlike modeled inputs often delivered by consumer data providers, validated data captures the context, truth, and emotions that drive real decisions. High-quality data delivers four critical advantages that synthetic alternatives simply cannot match:
- Contextual Accuracy: Captures the nuanced reality of consumer behavior in specific environments and moments.
- Behavioral Truth: Reveals what consumers actually do, not just what they say they do.
- Emotional Insights: Identifies the critical emotional triggers that drive purchase decisions.
- Predictive Power: Enables more accurate forecasting of future consumer behavior patterns.
Together, these qualities move research beyond guesswork and into actionable intelligence.
MFour’s Perspective: Capturing Consumers at the Point of Emotion®
At MFour, we believe the most valuable insights happen at the Point of Emotion® — the intersection of location, behavior, and sentiment. By collecting validated, permission-based data and pairing it with event-triggered consumer surveys, we eliminate recall bias and capture consumer truth in real time.
This is what synthetic shortcuts miss: the ability to see consumers not as models, but as multidimensional individuals living in real-world contexts. Unlike many consumer data providers that rely on modeled or synthetic inputs, MFour connects real behaviors with validated, permission-based data — ensuring a dataset that not only powers machine learning models, but does so with the accuracy required for confident decision-making.
The Path Forward
While synthetic data will continue to play a supporting role in market research, the evidence is clear: organizations that invest in high-quality, validated consumer data achieve superior insights, deeper consumer understanding, and ultimately, better business outcomes. The way you collect and validate data will determine whether your insights guide strategy — or misguide it.
Those who commit to this standard will gain a decisive competitive edge: the ability to understand consumers as they truly are, not as algorithms imagine them to be.
At MFour, we believe this is the future of consumer insights: a discipline rooted in accuracy, driven by context, and powered by real human behavior. In a research landscape filled with shortcuts, the only lasting advantage is quality.
