How OHIO students meet growing demand for consumer analytics

“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil,” declared a 2017 headline in The Economist. Rather, its writer argued, the “oil of the digital era” is data, and its tycoons—Google parent company Alphabet, along with Amazon, Apple, Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft—were at the time the world’s five most valuable listed firms. Less than a decade later, those behemoths, along with artificial intelligence company NVIDIA, remain the largest companies in the world by market cap, according to The Motley Fool.

Ohio University foresaw this shift to data as a commodity, which is why in 2014 College of Business Dean Hugh Sherman and marketing department chair Raj Agnihotri hired Dan Dahlen (BSJ ’76, MSA ’16) to help launch a new center of excellence within the college that “would provide our undergraduate students with the ability to actually conduct real research projects for real companies,” Dahlen explained. “That’s normally a graduate level-type activity.”

In Sherman and Agnihotri’s view, Dahlen’s 35-year career in advertising and marketing research, and his most recent employment with research firm Nielsen, made him “the perfect guy … to be the founding director of what we were calling the Consumer Research Center, the CRC,” Dahlen said.

Now known as the Center for Consumer Research and Analytics, the CRA is celebrating its 10^th anniversary. What started with just six student fellows and two clients has exploded, rising along with business’ insatiable demand for data-driven consumer insight to comprise 40 to 50 student fellows and a portfolio of more than 100 past and current clients ranging from Athens-based Donkey Coffee to Fortune 500 companies like Kroger and JPMorgan Chase.

“I never dreamt, when I first started the center, that it would be this large,” Dahlen said. “I remember [Dean Sherman] saying, ‘Someday, this center will have 50 fellows!’ I'm thinking to myself, I don't know about that. But he was right. Here we are.”

But raw data, like crude oil, requires refining to be of use.

“I think 10 to 20 years ago, a lot of people treated big data as this holy tome, this magic database containing all the answers they need,” said Jacob Hiler, current CRA director and Fox Associate Professor in Marketing in the College of Business. “Everybody rushed to it, because it was the new buzzword of the day and they didn’t really know what the limitations were, how to use it.”

Like an oil rush, the explosion of access to consumer data fueled a frenzy of business activity.

“There was a massive rush to have businesses incorporate analytics without developing the institutional knowledge to really understand the complexities of dealing with data,” Hiler explained. “They just hired people for the sake of hiring people.”

But, as Hiler noted, raw consumer data has inherent flaws, such as inconsistencies, errors, or lack of context. Hard metrics like ticket sales and viewership numbers are generally reliable, but more nuanced analysis of consumer sentiment is more difficult to both get and verify. As social media use exploded in the new millennium, companies began drilling into the digital marketplace of ideas for data on their customers’ preferences and habits.

“Big data is just a reflection of human beings, and we are messy, we lie, we have biases,” Hiler said. “But all of that is hidden because we’ve boiled it down into an unfeeling, numeric data set.” The problem is compounded by algorithms that intentionally suppress or magnify certain voices and the rise of AI bots, which in 2023 made up about 49.6% of internet traffic according to cybersecurity firm Thales.

“In today’s world, combining this aspect of big data—this human messiness that looks dispassionate, but really isn’t—with the increased amount of ‘We don’t even know if it is human anymore,’ means that usage of data analytics and big data is going to continue go up because it’s more accessible, but trust in it is going to go down,” Hiler explained. “The trust goes back to listening to what a real human being thinks about your product or service. That’s the value the CRA offers in this space.”

Each semester, small teams of CRA student fellows (guided by a faculty advisor) are assigned a project with a real-world client. The projects can range from researching and analyzing consumer sentiment to developing talent recruitment strategy and beyond, but they all represent a business problem in need of a solution. And while teams may perform traditional sentiment research online, they almost always incorporate an element of live human feedback.

“The most impactful work in my career usually happens inside of a focus group or an interview,” said Hiler, who worked with some of the nation’s biggest brands at Parker Marketing Research before coming to OHIO. He cited as an example the Heinz Dip & Squeeze single-serve ketchup packets, which developed after focus group participants suggested a potential polymer and design. The CRA has similar success stories, including research for Kellogg’s that informed decision-making behind Pop-Tarts Bites.

“To hear the senior director of Global Intelligence at Kellogg—who went to Ohio State, by the way—call our students’ work the most powerful research presentation that he's ever seen from a college, it was an amazing experience,” Dahlen said. “And then he paused and said, ‘You know, this is probably one of the best research presentations I've ever seen, period.’”

Of course, student-run projects have their limitations, most notably in terms of access to a diverse population of real-world people to query.

“Our samples are the student body,” Dahlen said. “I always thought that would be a negative … but it’s turned out to be an asset, because Gen Z research is difficult to do.”

It’s such an asset, in fact, that Adam Hepworth, associate director of client relations for the CRA, pitches it as the center’s “unique value proposition” when he and his team of students reach out to potential clients. “We can give insight into what is often an elusive consumer,” Hepworth said. “It’s hard to pin down 18-to-24-year-old customers, but we have special access to them. That usually gets the conversation going.”

The benefit is clear for Tim Poellmann, senior manager of marketing insights at DICK’S Sporting Goods. “The CRA provides a way for us to stay up-to-date with a university group on the academic side of consumer insights, work with students on real-world examples, and even gives us access to a hard-to-reach, but desirable, audience,” he said. “We see it as a true partnership, where we work with driven students on projects that matter, and where we get the fulfillment of watching students grown and learn a passion for consumer insights.”

Moreover, Dahlen pointed out, research on the college-age demographic can be expensive, and the CRA offers a budget-friendly route. Rather than charging for services, companies are invited to make an optional donation to the center, which supports stipends for student leadership positions, travel to in-person final presentations when possible, and other operating expenses.

And the CRA’s value goes far beyond direct access to a key and ever-changing demographic.

“[The CRA’s] ability to transform complex data into actionable insights has empowered us to make informed decisions and strategize effectively,” said Anna Shields, CEO of past CRA client Snowville Creamery. “Their expertise in delivering well-researched customer insights has proven invaluable to our decision-making process. … Collaborating with them has significantly enhanced our understanding of our customers and strengthened our position in the market.”

Supporting smaller, local brands like Snowville is built into the mission of the CRA, Hepworth said.

“In our outreach strategy, we want to make sure that we have one or two clients that are local or nonprofit [each year] so we can demonstrate that impact on community and focus on that social component of sustainability,” he explained. “They don't have the resources to have a consumer insights team in-house. So the work that we're doing for them, it can truly make quite a big difference.”

The CRA is an advantage for the University, too, attracting faculty interested in its unique model—including Hiler, Hepworth and Jessica Weeks, the center’s associate director of academics, who all cited the center as a significant selling point in their decision to come to OHIO.

“The other places I was talking to didn’t have anything like this [when I was searching in 2019], and there are still very, very few centers out there like the CRA,” Hepworth noted. “When I learned about students’ experiences and working directly with brands—and not the simulated projects, but hands-on experience as an extension of the brand—initially I was kind of jealous. I would have loved to have that in my undergrad, my masters, heck, my doctoral program! It's pretty impressive that we have it at an undergraduate level.”

Hiler was quick to reinforce the value that the center’s faculty advisors bring for students, both for their professional experience and the mentorship they provide.

“We’re very blessed to have such great faculty that are willing to devote their time to mentoring these students and getting our students to have these experiences,” he said. “I could pretty confidently say that every one of our fellows has found a mentor in one of their faculty advisors. And that mentorship permeates to our student leadership, too.”

But perhaps the CRA’s biggest beneficiaries are the student fellows behind it.

“The CRA was hands-down the [student organization] that I felt like the advisors cared the most. It was personal for them to see their students succeed,” said Taylor Bradshaw (B.B.A. ’21). “It was single-handedly the most influential thing that got me my first internship, which then got me my second one, which then got me the job that I have now.”

Now working for Unilever as a brand manager for Liquid IV, Bradshaw joined the CRA in her freshman year and stayed for the remainder of her college experience, serving as a team lead before graduating in December 2020.

“I decided to stay on campus for that spring semester [in 2021],” she recalled. “I wasn’t a student anymore, but I still wanted to be involved with the program. So Dr. Hiler hired me on as an advisor for a team … that was the first time I ever took a manager position.” During that time, she also did freelance consumer research and relied on Hiler and Weeks as mentors in her burgeoning career. Today, she pays it forward through her involvement the CRA’s alumni board.

“There were so many people who mentored me when I was a student,” she said. “It’s a perfect opportunity to come back and be able to do the same for other students.”

Mentorship and hands-on experience have been transformative for Lindsey Oberg, too. A senior co-majoring in marketing and business analytics, she credits the CRA with facilitating personal growth.

“I’ve learned how to be a better communicator” among peers, faculty, professional clients and executives, she noted. “I’ve developed so many leadership skills. … I just love to guide a team and take in those new fellows and help nurture their skills.”

Oberg now has a full-time job lined up post-graduation and said the CRA helped set the foundation for her career.

“In every single interview I’ve been in, the main thing that I get asked about … is my experience in the CRA,” she said. “It’s been so transformative, my time here.”

The CRA recruits new fellows each semester, though the intentionally small scale of the center makes the process highly competitive. Weeks, who manages recruitment efforts with the help of a team of student outreach coordinators, noted that more than 150 people requested an application for the spring 2025 semester.

“That doesn’t mean they’ll all go through with completing it,” she added. “Maybe we’ll have 30 or so complete an application, and depending on the semester, we’ll have five to 15 spots available.” Interested students submit a video response with their application; a select few are advanced to the interview stage, where they meet with Weeks and a student outreach coordinator.

The center comprises mostly undergraduate students in the College of Business, but it’s open to all and students from other disciplines—including graduate students—are encouraged to apply.

“The main thing that I look for [in applicants] is a curiosity about consumers,” Weeks said. “Everything else—skills in completing qualitative interviews, quantitative data analysis, writing surveys—we can teach them how to do all of that. They learn as they’re doing.”

Oberg is a prime example of the CRA’s learn-on-the-job model, having joined before declaring her co-majors.

“I felt really nurtured from the second I got in,” she said. “It sounds very scary and daunting, but I promise it’s not. You will learn more than you could ever imagine.”

Oberg is also earning the Consumer Research Certificate through the College of Business—an option exclusive to CRA fellows that includes course credit for participating in the center.

“We’ve got about 15 to 18 students completing the certificate at any given time,” Weeks said. “It’s a really neat thing for them to be able to add to their resume, because it's not something that's offered at a lot of universities. This focus on consumer research, marketing research, is kind of niche in that way.”

And while a CRA fellowship does not fulfill internship requirements for the College of Business, in many ways it goes beyond the traditional intern experience.

“The impact that our students have on the clients that we work with is far beyond what a typical internship would be,” Hiler said. “Our students have presented to VPs of marketing, VPs of consumer insights, in some cases, CEOs. Interns don’t typically get to do that.”

Hepworth agreed.

“Some of our students are working hands-on to inform Red Bull's connection strategy across campuses across the nation. So that work is happening here in Athens, Ohio, which is pretty impressive,” he said. “I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a student organization or experience that does a better job of offering students this immersive experiential learning opportunity than the CRA.”

Feature photo courtesy Jacob Hiler.