Artificial intelligence is currently turning market research upside down. While quantitative methods benefited early on from automation and scaling through AI, qualitative research was long considered too complex, too context-dependent, and too individual. But it is precisely where psychological depth has previously been limited by time, personnel, and methodology that AI is now opening up new possibilities: it makes qualitative research more agile, accessible, and connectable without compromising its core.
Back in 2021, we took the first steps toward further developing our depth psychology methodology with the possibilities offered by language models and AI-supported interaction systems. The goal was to increase its effectiveness in areas where traditional approaches reach their limits in practice—for example, in terms of speed, internal connectivity, or in the early stages of idea exploration.
Today, the rheingold Avatar Suite provides an AI tool for market research that delivers exactly what it promises: combining psychological depth with AI-based dialogue systems to make insights faster, more connectable, and available at any time.
Before focusing on specific applications, it is worth taking a look at the structural challenges of today's brand and innovation work and the role that AI can play in psychological research.
Three structural challenges in dealing with insights
Companies want to understand what motivates consumers, not only at the level of explicit statements, but also in terms of their emotional logic, inner tensions, and psychological patterns. At the same time, they are under considerable time pressure, have to deal with uncertainty, and need to evaluate concepts at an early stage.
Three challenges that our Avatar Suite offers solutions for come up particularly often in conversations with customers.
1. The 'corporate goldfish memory'.
Many companies have an enormous treasure trove of studies, explorations, and insights. At the same time, they often lack an overview: no one knows exactly when a question has already been investigated, what results are available, or how they should be classified. Knowledge exists, but it is fragmented, difficult to access, and hardly applicable to new questions. Research results disappear into presentations instead of remaining effective in everyday life.
2. The insight jungle.
In addition, learnings sometimes contradict each other or originate from different contexts. Different points in time, departments, objectives, and methodological approaches generate a multitude of plausible but unintegrated insights. What is missing is a unifying perspective of understanding that reveals connections and provides orientation. Instead of clarity, complexity arises, and decisions are negotiated rather than made on a sound basis.
3. The real-life gap.
Findings are further developed, concepts iterated, ideas refined. At this point, they should be tested again or psychologically mirrored. However, it is precisely at this point that there is often a lack of time, budget, or organizational capacity for further study. A gap arises between insight and decision, which in practice is often closed by assumptions or empirical values.
The rheingold avatars embody consistent attitudes and motivation profiles.
This is exactly where the Avatar Suite comes in: as an AI tool for market research, as a targeted methodological extension of qualitative research. In collaboration with AI specialist Repon, a software-based research tool was developed that makes psychological knowledge accessible in a structured form in the form of dialogical avatars, enables individualized target groups, and efficiently transfers it into research and work processes.
Unique approach to human behavior
What makes the rheingold Avatar Suite unique is its three-dimensional psychological framework, developed from over 35 years of qualitative rheingold research. Built on depth psychology models and trained with typical motivations, behaviors, language patterns, and response logic, the avatars that result are not just random chatbots, but rather represent consistent attitudes, needs profiles, and specific worldviews. The rheingold Avatar Suite thus offers an unprecedented approximation of human behavior and experience.
The Avatar Suite is currently divided into three independent workspaces that represent different perspectives and application logics.
- MIA: Representative of tomorrow's consumers, acting as a sparring partner for exploratory innovation and future issues.
- rheingold Originals: Representation of the entire population in four basic psychological types for classifying social dynamics and testing ideas with broad applicability. The types were validated in a quantitative study, and the underlying data is integrated into the avatars.
- GOLDI: Knowledge workspace in which a company's project-specific research is integrated and made available for dialogue.
The respective avatars respond reliably on the basis of structured psychological structures and make specific perspectives accessible in a dialogical and lasting way.
Systematic access to depth psychological knowledge
The Avatar Suite provides specific methodological tools for this purpose, including structured wizards for guiding question sequences, dialog-based exploration formats, and integrated evaluation and comparison options. This allows in-depth psychological knowledge to be systematically utilized, hypotheses to be tested in a targeted manner, different perspectives to be compared, and findings to be translated into work and decision-making processes in a comprehensible way. The suite allows you to work with both text and image material.
Key use cases of the Avatar Suite
In highly complex markets with increasing pressure to make decisions, immediately available, psychologically sound target groups offer a new form of orientation and decision-making. Avatars provide direct access to the motivational structures behind observable behavior, enabling rapid classification, comparability, and prioritization—as a supplement to existing research formats.
1. Early psychological evaluation and optimization of ideas, concepts, packaging, and claims in words and images.
Even before ideas reach the stage where they are ready for traditional testing methods, they can be psychologically tested using avatars. Concepts, narratives, or product ideas can be classified, refined, and further developed at an early stage, without the need for recruitment efforts or long lead times.
2. Target group-specific communication development
Different psychological perspectives reveal how messages are received by people with different attitudes and where unconscious irritations arise. This allows communicative uncertainties to be addressed in a targeted manner and narratives to be adjusted.
3. Knowledge management and further development of psychological findings
Our knowledge avatars make existing psychological knowledge permanently available. Findings from studies, typologies, or target group models are made accessible in a dialogical form and can be continuously reused by teams—to explore issues in greater depth, for internal coordination, or to support decision-making.
Avatar Suite as a new working mode for qualitative psychological research
As an AI tool for market research, the Avatar Suite closes a gap in the research process. It makes existing findings usable in a dialogical way and allows hypotheses, concepts, and strategic assumptions to be psychologically tested beyond traditional field phases. In this way, research is no longer sporadic, but becomes an active part of everyday work.
This approach is already proving successful across a range of industries, for example in projects in the furniture, healthcare, and DIY sectors, where companies are using the Avatar Suite as an everyday, continuous work tool.
outlook
What companies gain from the Avatar Suite is new, direct access to psychological perspectives on products, brands, and ideas, which is constantly supplemented by new features and tools. The rheingold Avatar Suite combines artificial intelligence and depth psychology research in a precisely managed system with clear models and consistent structures that organizes psychological knowledge, develops it further, and makes it permanently usable for corporate success.
At the rheingold Institute since 2011 and member of the management team. She speaks five languages and conducts research internationally. Her other areas of focus are social and cultural research, cleaning and personal care as well as the seamless consumer.
Phone: +49 221-466 828 0
E-mail: barbolini@rheingold-online.de
