Prof. Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff, Corporate Vice President of Global Market Research at Henkel, has described new marketing decision support software from Market Logic as a major step forward for market research, because it helps companies to connect their data to generate insights. “Market Logic has done a major leap, by providing a very systematic way for companies to combine different pieces of knowledge to generate insights. What they're offering is a formal distilling job that takes the whole subjective nature out of this process”.

In a September 2010 podcast with Market Logic, Schroiff defines an insight as “a combination of different pieces of knowledge that are connected” to build the basis for marketing activities such as innovation. In this context, he says many companies are “data rich, but knowledge poor - they have all kinds of systems, they have all kinds of resources, they just do not know how to tie things together to identify what the big points are”. Market Logic provides “the missing link between diverse knowledge pieces and a consolidated, aggregated or distilled model about what drives markets”, which helps marketers to concentrate on the important issues that drive value generation.

The explosion of customer information, driven in part by social media, makes the need for Market Logic’s solution all the more urgent. “No senior manager, no decision maker, can digest the swell of information that is available today”. By way of example, Schroiff says you can follow an online discussion group for a few weeks to get all of “the basic knowledge about a product category for free ... the challenge is … to come up with an idea of what is really meaningful, by identifying the underlying structure. It takes companies like Market Logic to see the structure behind this input and that is the reason why I welcome their appearance on the scene”.

Schroiff argues that this approach allows companies “to focus on the most important issues … to have a chance to be innovative to the point where the consumer says “Now you really understand me, I was not able to tell you that I needed this and that, but now that you’re showing this to me as I concept, now it’s really, really helpful to me”.