Consumer Understanding
Human Insights
Traditional Consumer and Market Research in the food and beverage industry has used a one-dimensional consumption-centric model of buying behavior. While vital, we believe that a modern approach to insights should begin more broadly, with a recognition that food and drink are more than products;they are fundamental to human culture and touch nearly every part of our lives.
The Firmenich Human Insights team pulls the camera back to create a wide-angle understanding of food & beverage in the context of life itself. We explore the human emotions, needs, and tensions that shape our preferences and behavior through the lens of families, communities, science, and environment. This Human-Centric approach prompts us to Ask Questions Others Are Not Asking. In turn, this gives us and our customers an edge to uncover differentiated and disruptive insights to drive innovation and find solutions that meet real human needs.

Our Mission: Understand Deeply, Inspire Greatly
We also take a holistic approach to building tools and capabilities for generating insights. By combining three departments with diverse skillsets- ranging from early signal detection, to deep understanding of sensory perception and consumer preferences, to data-driven nuances of market dynamics- we are able to connect the dots and see patterns that others miss:
RE-THINKING INSIGHTS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Fundamentally Human, Powered by Digital
Our focus is fundamentally Human, but we are powered by a data-centric array of digital tools and approaches to accelerate our ability to analyze, understand, rapidly iterate, test and make predictions about consumers and markets. We are innovators – together with Firmenich Information Systems, we’ve created our own software and applications, such as Flavor Knowledge Portal™, IRIS™, and our new groundbreaking YUMmm™ App. We increasingly harness the power of machine learning and combine with it the deep understanding of human behavior and emotion to provide the most agile and accurate insights to our customers.
Developing a new product? Need distinctive, powerful insights to turbo charge innovation? We can help you out.
YOUR COMPLETE TOOLKIT
For Agile-Human Centric Innovation
Each Human Insights team specializes in specific areas of expertise to help inspire, guide and validate your new product development.
- Foresight & Trenz focuses on signal detection, curation and macrotrend frameworks brought to life through immersive market walks and Sensoriums. Be inspired by the future.
- Markets & Knowledge brings you syndicated data, analytics, and social media monitoring, leveraging the latest digital tools. Understand what new market opportunities and white spaces exist.
- Consumer & Sensory Insights is your source for primary consumer research both quantitative and qualitative, sensory and product testing, survey design, panel and facility operation and multivariate statistics. Deliver unique products that delight and drive repeat purchase.
