Behavix Thought Leadership Series: The Future of Consumer Intelligence

Interview with Behavix new Strategic Advisor Joaquim Bretcha, based in Barcelona, Spain.

Background

Behavix is proud to welcome Joaquim Bretcha as Strategic Advisor, bringing one of the most respected and globally connected voices in the insights industry into the Behavix ecosystem. Joaquim has spent his career helping shape the future of market research, data, and consumer understanding, including serving as President of ESOMAR from 2019 to 2021 and Director General of ESOMAR from 2023 to 2026, while also playing a key role in the international growth of Netquest and holding executive roles across companies including Auchan, Synovate, and Kantar.

His background combines deep expertise in panel innovation, international research markets, professional standards, industry governance, and the evolving relationship between survey data, behavioral data, AI, and consumer insight. At Behavix, Joaquim will advise the company on strategic industry collaboration, work with associations and standardization bodies, support relationships with leading users of behavioral data, and help expand the Behavix ecosystem of panel and audience partners integrating the Behavix SDK.

Joaquim is also continuing to contribute to the wider industry conversation through Insights Plaza, his new podcast and platform exploring the future of insights, data, AI, and market research leadership.

We at Behavix are hosting this interview with Joaquim to get his thoughts about the key trends and changes taking place in the industry right now!

Interview with Behavix

1. The Macro Shift in Market Research

Joaquim, you have spent decades at the absolute forefront of global insights, observing how brands try to keep pace with changing consumer dynamics. From a macro perspective, what are the most fundamental structural changes you see occurring within the market research ecosystem today, and what must legacy providers do to avoid obsolescence?

The past two decades have been decisive. I would identify three major periods:

1. Low interest rates and technology startups getting into our ecosystem, with Venture Capital and Private Equity flowing like never before. In this period, technology entered our ecosystem in the form of automation, DIY platforms, and new data collection means - thanks to the digitization of people’s lives. Additionally, there was a major change in the ownership of the main players on the supply side, implementing a finance-led management approach to a sector previously dominated by market research practitioners.
2. COVID-19. The pandemic had a higher impact on our lives and businesses than the one we tend to acknowledge. It was a wake-up call for brands on crucial aspects, such as the need to be much closer to their consumers’ changing habits and preferences. Consequently, “agile” solutions, DIY platforms, and the disintermediation of the value chain were boosted.
3. The Generative AI explosion. I am running an extremely rewarding and interesting exercise with my recently launched podcast, Insights Plaza. I am interviewing some of the professionals I had already interviewed in my previous podcast, launched three and a half years ago—just before generative AI entered the public sphere. It has drastically changed our conversations. As a reference, at that time, the next big thing was the Metaverse.

Legacy providers have adapted to these shifts, while some players that emerged before 2020 are already seen as “legacy” because of the speed and intensity of change. The key is relevance and value creation. In a market where speed matters and many activities are becoming commoditized, delivering real substance is essential. We should also be more cautious about what we choose to commoditize. The “good enough is good” approach is a double-edged sword: years of treating survey data as a commodity and competing mainly on price have contributed to a data-quality crisis that now requires significant investment in stronger quality controls.

2. Observed Actions vs. Claimed Intent

A core tenant of the Behavix philosophy is that “surveys capture intentions, while behavioral data captures actions”. In your experience, how significant is the financial and operational impact of the “say-do gap” for modern brands, and why has the research industry remained heavily reliant on retrospective survey methods for so long?

The “say-do gap” is critical and is rooted in human nature. When we force the rationalization of decisions that were not rational, or the recollection of past actions to which we did not pay attention, the gap becomes evident. As with all methodologies in research, you need to choose the one that best fits your purpose and provides good judgment and context. Surveys have proven to be excellent tools that are well understood by all stakeholders; they have worked remarkably well, despite their limitations, for decades.

However, since technology allows us to massively capture objective human behavior without asking, our understanding of it definitely gets elevated. It is a matter of breaking inertias and innovating in how we approach consumer understanding—adding new options to collect the what while unlocking the why.

3. Building Credible Panel Environments: The Netquest Era

During your highly successful journey at Netquest, you cracked the code on building deeply trusted, high-retention consumer panels across diverse international markets. What were your defining learnings from that era regarding how to treat digital panelists ethically, protect data privacy, and maintain data integrity at scale?

I joined Netquest in 2009 because I wanted to get into digital market research. Until that moment, I took data for granted as a basic raw material for my analysis. Working for a digital data collector made me realize how important this first stage of the value chain is to guarantee the quality of the whole process.

I learned that the real asset for a panel company is the people who participate in the required activities and the quality of the community. This means treating people fairly from the moment they join the community—from the way they are incentivized to the activities they are exposed to, including engaging surveys. Ultimately, respect for their privacy and fair treatment is key.

4. Protecting Global Industry Standards: The ESOMAR Perspective

As the former President of ESOMAR, you have held a unique seat overlooking the ethical and regulatory boundaries of data collection worldwide. As we move rapidly into a world of deep, in-app measurement and walled garden access, how can technology companies balance the need for extreme data granularity with consumer transparency and GDPR/global compliance metrics?

I have always found the ICC/ESOMAR Code of Conduct to be the perfect north star in our profession. To answer this question, let me literally copy its five fundamental principles that encompass the role and relevance of market, opinion, and social research, as well as data analytics in the current environment. While legality is the foundation, the Code upholds ethical standards that go above and beyond legal requirements:

1. All research must be legal, honest, transparent, and truthful.

2. All research must be conducted with due care. Interactions must be fair, respectful, and avoid harming the data subject.

3. Data subjects must clearly understand how their personal data will be collected and used. All personal data must be fully protected against unauthorized access or use.

4. Researchers must behave ethically and not do anything that may undermine the public’s trust and confidence in research or damage its reputation.

5. Researchers have the overall responsibility and oversight for the research they undertake, irrespective of the method, technique, and technology applied. Those who contribute to the research have a degree of responsibility commensurate with their activities, expertise, and control.

5. The AI Horizon and the Synthetic Data Debate

The industry is currently experiencing intense discussions around Generative AI, machine learning, and the potential of synthetic data to replace human respondents altogether. How do you view the role of AI in market research—and why does the rise of an AI-driven economy actually make ground-truth, observed human behavioral data more critical than ever?

Generative AI is transforming the knowledge ecosystem and, consequently, our domain. We are the guardians of human understanding and have worked with data for the last 100 years. AI provides the capacity to enhance our capabilities, to find connections that could have been missed, and to automate many of the processes and calculations we have always done. Also, with synthetic users and digital twins, new capabilities are available.

However, this entire system cannot be sustainable if it lacks a solid foundation of true human data. I believe that we are entering a phase in which genuine human data in all of its expressions (written, oral, or through their digital footprint) is more important than ever. This is the raw data needed to train the AI models currently implemented everywhere. We cannot afford to create a world not based on real human data. Therefore, we must have very clear guardrails and judgment to decide when artificial resources can be applied and when their usage puts us at risk.

6. The Decision to Join Behavix

Out of all the emerging data players and analytics software platforms emerging globally, you chose to align your experience with Behavix. What was the exact “aha” moment for you when reviewing our third-generation SDK architecture, and what excites you most about what we are building for the future of behavioral infrastructure?

I joined the market research industry with TNS Worldpanel, working with household data. Coming from my retailer experience, having this complementary source of truth—which reflected real purchases from real consumers—was fantastic. Since then, I have learned to appreciate behavioral data.

A further step was the acquisition of the digital tracker by Netquest, which allowed me to extend household purchase tracking to comprehensive digital behavior. My first study was to comprehend the digital behavior of mothers of babies in Brazil. It was fascinating to observe their digital habits in such a period, from search terms to consumption.

When I learned about Behavix’s third generation, led by Hannu, it immediately caught my interest as it combines top-notch technology with a strong focus on respecting people’s privacy and total transparency with panelists and panel companies. I believe in constructing a solid infrastructure that allows researchers to comprehend people’s digital behavior—the what—to be able to focus on the why.