The IDR team attended Quirk’s New York 2026 at the Javits Center last week, spending two days immersed in the conversations shaping market research right now. Between sessions and the expo floor, we spoke with clients across a range of sectors and the themes that emerged were consistent, urgent and telling.

"What struck me most at Quirk’s this year was how consistent the message was, regardless of category or company size. Technology is accelerating everything, but the premium on human expertise is only growing. The organizations that will lead are those that know when to lean on the machine and when to pick up the phone." — Steve Maguschak, Account Manager, IDR

Here is what stood out.

1. AI is a tool, not a substitute for human judgment

Artificial intelligence dominated the agenda — from accelerating qualitative analysis to developing synthetic personas and AI-moderated interviews. The efficiency gains are real and the industry is moving fast. But the most candid conversations in the room acknowledged a growing anxiety: that speed and scale are being prioritized at the expense of depth and reliability. The consensus among experienced researchers is that AI works best when it augments human interpretation, not when it replaces it. The question is no longer whether to use AI, but how to ensure human judgment remains at the center of the process. A topic we covered in a recent webinar.

2. Closing the "say-do" gap demands context, not just data

A recurring theme across sessions was the widening gap between what consumers say they will do and what they actually do. Brands from Boots to Kraft Heinz are grappling with this in real time. Closing that gap requires more than tracking digital signals or running another survey — it requires the kind of contextual, lived expertise that only comes from practitioners who understand a category from the inside. Automated tools can surface the "what." Human experts provide the "why."

3. Healthcare is emerging as a defining research priority

Clients at Quirk’s told us that demand for healthcare-fluent expertise is rising sharply, driven by the pace of clinical and behavioral change that generalist research methods simply cannot keep up with. The complexity of the space — regulatory, clinical, and commercial — means that access to genuine subject-matter experts has never been more valuable.

4. Quality of insight is outpacing quantity of data

There was a palpable shift in the room around data quality. Survey fraud, inattentive respondents, and the proliferation of AI-generated responses are eroding confidence in large-scale quantitative methods. Insights leaders are responding by placing greater emphasis on the provenance and authenticity of their sources. The volume of data available has never been greater; the challenge is finding intelligence that can actually be trusted and acted upon. That shift is driving renewed interest in expert-led research as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, traditional methodologies.

5. Greater education needed on expert networks

A recurring theme in conversations with market researchers was that many said they were still unfamiliar with expert networks and often confuse them with traditional panel providers. This highlights a need for greater education to ensure research projects use the most appropriate methodology for the business questions being addressed, particularly when insights need to be drawn from human that based their responses on recent, relevant and specific experiences.

Interested in exploring these trends or discussing how they could impact your research?

Get in touch with us.