AI AND YOUR JOB · CHECKED OCT 2026
Will AI replace market research analysts?
Not the whole job. AI tools now draft surveys, run customer interviews, crunch survey files and watch competitors around the clock, but choosing the right question, spotting a bad sample and telling leaders what to do still falls to the analyst. BLS projects 7 percent job growth from 2025 to 2035, with about 82,000 openings a year.
- Tasks from the US Labor Department's O*NET
- Pay and outlook from BLS
- 15 sources
AI EXPOSURE TODAY
Medium
AI does 1 and helps with 8 of 13 core tasks. 4 are still human.
- AI does it (1)
- AI helps (8)
- Still human (4)
Task by task: what AI can do today
The core tasks of the job, from the US Labor Department's O*NET profile (13-1161.00). Each verdict links to its evidence.
| Task | Verdict | Tools doing it | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monitor industry statistics and follow trends in trade literature | AI does this today | Perplexity, Perplexity | Research platforms send real time alerts on market moves, news and competitor activity and attach an AI summary to every earnings call transcript, so the reading pile is pre sorted before you open it. [6][7] |
| Gather data on competitors' prices, sales and marketing methods | AI helps, you check | Perplexity, AlphaSense | AI search pulls competitor facts together with numbered links to the original pages, but prices change weekly and a footnote is only as good as the page behind it, so you still confirm each figure. [6][7] |
| Collect and analyze customer demographic, preference and buying habit data | AI helps, you check | ChatGPT, Microsoft 365 Copilot | Upload a spreadsheet of purchases and ChatGPT or Copilot in Excel will summarize trends, outliers and segments in minutes, though both vendors tell you to review the assumptions before relying on the result. [3][5] |
| Prepare reports that turn findings into charts and plain written summaries | AI helps, you check | Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT | Copilot in Power BI can build a report page and write a narrative summary of it, and ChatGPT can produce charts and decks, but the story the client hears and the caveats it carries are your call. [4][9] |
| Design surveys, polls and questionnaires, or find existing data | AI helps, you check | ChatGPT, ChatGPT | SurveyMonkey builds a survey from a plain text brief and flags structure and question format problems as you go, but leading wording, missing answer options and the wrong sample frame still take a trained eye to catch. [9][15] |
| Measure customer and employee satisfaction | AI helps, you check | SurveyMonkey AI, Zendesk intelligent triage | Survey and help desk tools now tag open text answers by sentiment and pull out themes automatically, but Zendesk notes its tagging reads only the subject and first comment, so deeper satisfaction drivers still need your analysis. [8][15] |
| Measure how well marketing, advertising and communication programs work | AI helps, you check | Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot in Excel | Copilot can answer questions about campaign data and build a missing chart on request, but deciding which result was caused by the ad and which by a holiday or price cut is analysis a tool cannot own. [4][5] |
| Forecast and track marketing and sales trends | AI helps, you check | ChatGPT | AI runs the Python and the statistics for a forecast on request, but in the DSBench study the best data science agent solved only about a third of realistic analysis tasks, so the model needs your checking. [3][10] |
| Help companies understand their position in the marketplace | Still human | None | Telling a company where it truly stands means weighing messy evidence against what leaders want to hear, and that judgment is what clients pay an analyst for. |
| Research consumer opinions with marketers, statisticians and pollsters | AI helps, you check | Listen Labs | Platforms like Listen Labs write the questions, find participants and run thousands of AI voice interviews at once for clients such as Microsoft, but deciding what the study must answer and whether the sample can be trusted is still your job with the wider team. [14] |
| Direct trained survey interviewers | Still human | None | Where human interviewers are still used, training them, listening in on calls and fixing bad habits in the field is people management. |
| Advise management on pricing, product design and distribution | Still human | None | Recommending a price or a launch market puts your name on a business bet, and leaders want a person who can defend it in the room. |
| Set up procedures for spotting advertising needs | Still human | None | Building a process that fits how a specific company plans, budgets and buys media depends on knowing its people and politics. |
The job market for market research analysts
Source: Market Research Analysts. BLS expects this job to grow 7% over 2025 to 2035.
Where market research analysts can move next
GROWING · $120,230
Data scientist
Building and validating the models that AI tools rely on is a fast growing field, and your survey statistics and data cleaning experience is a head start. Most roles want stronger coding and math skills, often a degree in statistics or computer science. [11]
Median pay $120,230 · outlook +35%GROWING · $101,860
Management analyst
Consultants who diagnose a business and steer the change rely on interviews, trust and judgment, and your habit of turning data into recommendations carries straight over. [12]
Median pay $101,860 · outlook +10%GROWING · $166,790
Marketing manager
Managers own the budget and the final call on campaigns, and BLS names market research analyst as a common path into the role. It usually takes several years of experience first. [13]
Median pay $166,790 · outlook +7%AI tools changing this job
Our honest reviews of the tools named above.
Top picks: The Best AI Chatbot · The Best AI Presentation Maker
MARKET RESEARCH ANALYST AI PROOF KIT
Want the step by step plan for market research analysts?
We are writing a market research analyst version of our AI Proof Kit: the tools to learn, how to set them up, a raise script and the safest next roles. We write kits in the order people ask for them.
Want to see what a kit looks like? See the bookkeeper kit.
Quick questions
Will AI replace market research analysts?
Not on current evidence. BLS projects employment to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 82,000 openings a year [2]. The tools are strong at the mechanical parts, but in one benchmark the best data science agent solved only 34.12 percent of realistic data analysis tasks [10].
What AI tools do market research analysts use?
Common picks include ChatGPT for analyzing uploaded spreadsheets and making charts [3], Copilot in Excel and Power BI for summaries, PivotTables and report pages [4] [5], AlphaSense for earnings call summaries and competitor alerts [6], and Perplexity for quick desk research with cited sources [7].
Can AI analyze survey data on its own?
It can run the numbers, but not safely on its own. OpenAI tells users to review the generated code, outputs and assumptions, and warns that values from scanned PDFs may not be read reliably [3]. Automatic sentiment tagging in Zendesk judges a ticket from its subject and first comment only [8], so open ended answers still need a human read.
Can AI interview customers instead of a researcher?
It already does at some firms. Fortune reported that Listen Labs runs thousands of AI voice interviews at once, finds the participants and turns the results into reports, with clients including Microsoft and Canva [14]. Someone still has to decide what the study should answer and judge whether the people interviewed match the market.
Can AI do competitor research for me?
It handles the first pass well. AlphaSense says its monitoring sends instant updates on competitor activity and summarizes every earnings call [6], and Perplexity links each answer to its sources [7]. Those are vendor descriptions, so check key figures against the original filing or price list before they go in a client deck.
Is market research analyst a good career with AI?
Yes, for people who pair research judgment with AI fluency. The median pay was $78,760 in May 2025 and the job is projected to grow faster than most [2]. Analysts who add stronger statistics can also move toward data science, which BLS projects to grow 35 percent [11].
Sources
Checked 2026-10-10. Verdicts are Leapscope's reading of these sources. We did not test these tools hands on for this page.
- Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists (13-1161.00), O*NET OnLine
- Market Research Analysts, Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Data analysis with ChatGPT, OpenAI Help Center
- Use Copilot with Power BI reports and semantic models, Microsoft Learn
- Get started with Copilot in Excel, Microsoft Support
- AI tools for earnings analysis, AlphaSense
- How does Perplexity work?, Perplexity
- Automatically detecting customer intent, sentiment, and language, Zendesk
- Creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with ChatGPT Work, OpenAI Help Center
- DSBench: How Far Are Data Science Agents from Becoming Data Science Experts?, arXiv (ICLR 2025)
- Data Scientists, Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Management Analysts, Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers, Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Startup Listen Labs raised $27M to reinvent customer research, Fortune
- SurveyMonkey AI: Generate and Analyze Surveys With AI, SurveyMonkey
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