Givaudan launches key AI-enhanced customer foresight system
The Givaudan fragrance, taste and wellbeing group has launched its AI-enhanced Customer Foresight platform that is anticipated to have a major impact on future product development, writes Neill Barston.
As the business noted, its latest resource, developed at its Digital Factory in Paris, France leverages human expertise, big data and artificial intelligence to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges, foresee consumer expectations, and create winning food experiences.
Customer Foresight is an industry first, able to identify early indications about impending, future shifts that will impact the food and beverage industry. It is designed to support customers in understanding, planning for and addressing disruptive changes in consumer desires, guiding strategic planning, and leading to co-creation opportunities.
According to the company, as it becomes smarter through AI, Customer Foresight will have the ability to anticipate what’s next a decade from now – or beyond.
Louie D’Amico, President Taste & Wellbeing, Givaudan said, “We’re dedicated to helping our customers understand and unravel the complexities of consumers’ evolving needs and expectations. I’m truly excited about the limitless applications and use-cases that Customer Foresight will provide. Our experts are able to gain insight and foresight into any future food or beverage opportunity. Their resulting foresights can include anything from customisable and transversal future scenarios, to visualised target personas brought to life virtually.
The Company announced its development of Customer Foresight during the first half of 2022 and has been working with a select group of customers in different markets testing it from end-to-end. The powerful results from the pilot led to forward-thinking, new experience concepts based on data-driven foresights and futurescaping prowess.
Nandita Prabhu, Givaudan’s Customer Foresight Director explained: “For our customers, understanding potential futures in a category, particular market, and for a specific target consumer can be a game-changer. In our recent pilot programme we supported a customer in turning around declining growth in their carbonated soft drinks category in an important emerging market. Customer Foresight considered every aspect of the market – the region, country, segment, category, and brand dynamics, as well as related or adjacent consumer and product attributes and movements.”
From there, AI refined, sorted and clustered this mass of data into clear patterns of weak signals and drivers of change, which ranged from demographic and social to economic, and environmental.
Prabhu continued: “Our foresight experts, known as ‘futurescapers,’ then mapped these patterns and created potential scenarios, leading to specific ideas for new product experiences. The result was true, actionable foresight that – in a fast and entirely new way – guided high value concepts fit to address a complex issue such as declining growth. This really is an industry first,” noting that its capabilities will continue to be enhanced from its initial roll-out.
