Ipsos vs User Intuition: Research Methods and Pricing

Ipsos offers DIY, collaborative and managed research. Its AI-moderated interactions use dynamic probing, with expert involvement available. The useful buying distinction is therefore the research program your team needs and how you want to operate it.

For a product team investigating a rejected proposition, User Intuition’s consumer interviews follow the shopper’s interpretation, recent experience and alternatives. Your team can turn those explanations into a revised concept, then investigate the specific assumption that remains unresolved. This suits research teams and agencies that own the decision and want to repeat focused studies as the brief develops.

User Intuition’s moderator can investigate what a participant means by a familiar answer such as “good value.” It can follow a recent purchase, the alternative considered and the outcome the shopper wanted. That develops a usable explanation of value, including unexpected priorities that a fixed list of benefits might miss.

User Intuition’s laddering approach is informed by Reynolds and Gutman’s laddering method, which connects product attributes to consequences and personal values. For a consumer brand, easy preparation may matter because it protects time with the family, rather than because speed is valuable on its own. Understanding that chain helps the team choose a benefit to communicate and the occasions where the proposition is most relevant.

Ipsos’s AI interview workflow supports hundreds of conversations concurrently and topline analysis in minutes after fieldwork ends. That analysis interval starts after participants have completed the research. A complete study timeline also includes preparing the brief and reaching the intended audience.

User Intuition supports your own participants and a 4M+ vetted panel. Findings arrive as quality interviews finish, so the team can start examining explanations while fieldwork continues. A common learning goal can be investigated across markets while the moderator explores the local routines, alternatives and expectations behind each answer.

User Intuition charges $30 per quality voice interview. Incentives for your own participants are separate, and specialist audiences require a recruiting quote. Research teams and agencies can budget a small interview study before committing to a larger program or purchasing a recurring allowance.

Ipsos FastFacts provides an instant survey quote based on the audience, sample and questionnaire. A survey can establish how frequently an answer appears; a depth interview can explain what that answer means in the participant’s experience. The relevant price comparison includes the method and deliverable your decision requires, with User Intuition providing a published unit price for the interview work.

For consumer research, a respondent can meet a screener and still provide answers too thin to guide a decision. User Intuition checks whether the conversation develops specific experiences and covers the learning goals before charging. That makes substantive interviewing part of what the team purchases.

Ipsos combines methodological expertise with the quality controls appropriate to its research products. User Intuition’s published interview billing rule gives a team a concrete budget protection: failed conversations incur no platform charge. Evidence review then examines the accepted interviews to determine which explanations support a recommendation and which questions deserve further investigation.

User Intuition’s evidence review is informed by Malterud et al.’s information power framework and Hennink et al.’s meaning-saturation research. These approaches connect sample adequacy to relevant information and distinguish identifying a theme from understanding it in depth. For a consumer study, User Intuition uses these principles to assess whether an explanation holds across relevant occasions and alternatives. It can recommend deeper analysis of existing interviews or a targeted follow-up with the consumers whose experiences could change the proposed product or message.

A shopper study illustrates how this evidence review works. We interviewed 43 Walmart shoppers to understand purchase decisions, trip friction and return intent. Thirty-six said they would shop at Walmart again. User Intuition recommends recontacting shoppers after their next comparable trip and comparing those who returned with those who chose another store. The follow-up tests which experiences turn stated intent into a store choice. Explore the Walmart study, two recommended follow-ups and sample presentation.

For example, a strategist can ask why a promising product concept appeals in principle but loses to the familiar alternative at purchase. An assistant can search previous studies, identify what is already known and prepare a focused interview plan. The team reviews the audience, learning goals and cost before approving the work.

User Intuition’s agentic research workflow then brings findings back with supporting participant accounts. The researcher can examine competing explanations, revise the hypothesis and prepare the next study. This reduces the handoffs between developing a question, commissioning interviews and using their evidence in the decision.

User Intuition builds synthetic participants from real, opted-in respondents, using their individual traits, habits and behaviors. It repeatedly compares synthetic responses with the same respondents’ real answers to calibrate the models. That grounding preserves differences in experience and priorities that generic LLM feedback flattens.

This design is informed by Park et al. (2024). Their simulations of 1,052 people reproduced General Social Survey answers 85% as accurately as those people reproduced their own answers two weeks later. The study informs User Intuition’s emphasis on individual grounding and repeated calibration. Ipsos InnoTest synthetic idea screening uses country- and category-specific consumer survey data and validation against real responses. For User Intuition, the practical benefit is a more specific hypothesis about what would make a proposition matter to a particular person.