Consumer Insights - Can AI Reveal What Shoppers Really Want?

S5E13 Future of AI-Powered Consumer Insights with Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan

In Season 5, Episode 13 of The Retail Razor Show, hosts Ricardo Belmar and Casey Golden tackle one of retail’s biggest blind spots in consumer insights: the consumer sentiment gap. For decades, brands relied on surveys to understand shoppers. But what people say doesn’t always match what they do.

Enter AI-powered shopper insights!

Joining the conversation are Trevor Sumner (CEO of i-Genie AI) and Stan Sthanunathan (Executive Chairman of i-Genie AI, former EVP at Unilever and VP at Coca-Cola). Together, they reveal how billions of unfiltered signals — from searches, reviews, and social posts — can be transformed into real-time, actionable consumer insights that reshape retail decision-making.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why traditional consumer surveys are breaking down
• How AI and natural language processing uncover real customer behavior
• The role of empathy vs sympathy in understanding consumers
• How disruptor brands are reshaping competitive landscapes
• Why augmented intelligence (AI + human insight) is the future of retail strategy and consumer insights

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About our Guests

Trevor Sumner, CEO, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorsumner/

Trevor is a NYC-based entrepreneur, product and marketing executive and recognized startup advisor and angel. Trevor is the CEO at i-Genie.ai, the leading AI platform for consumer insights, revolutionizing an industry that had been dominated with antiquated survey methodologies by synthesizing tens of billions of searches, social and video posts, ratings and reviews and market data for industry leaders like Kenvue, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Bayer, Clorox and more.

Previously, Trevor was Head of AI and Data Platform products for Raydiant, a leading VC-backed digital experience platform that is transforming over 250,000 digital touch points across 4,500 clients with AI, computer vision and data.

Trevor came to Raydiant when it acquired Perch, a recognized leader in in-store Product Engagement Marketing, interactive retail displays and augmented reality, where Trevor served as CEO. Perch was named a Top Tech Company to Watch by Forbes, a Top 10 Retail Technology company by CIO Review and has won numerous Clio, Fast Company, Edison, Bloomberg and Digi awards.

Stan Sthanunathan, Executive Chairman, i-Genie.AI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sthanunathan-1ab4035/

Stan Sthanunathan joined Unilever in July 2013 as Executive Vice President of Consumer & Market Insights. As chief provocateur, he headed up the insights function globally based in London. He retired from Unilever on June 1, 2021.

Post retirement he has started an AI/ML enabled company called i-Genie.AI focused on delivering near real time insights and ideas to help business identify Next Big Thing. Prior to joining Unilever, he was Vice President of Marketing Strategy & Insights for The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, heading up the function on a global basis.

Stan co-authored a paper on Building an Insights Engine that was published in Harvard Business Review, Sept 2016. He has also co-authored a book titled AI for Marketing and Product Innovation.

He was awarded Lifetime Achievement award at TMRE 2022 event.

Chapters:

00:00 Previews 

01:23 Show Intro 

04:43 The Consumer Sentiment Gap 

05:37 Welcome Trevor Sumner & Stan Sthanunathan 

06:30 Backgrounds of Trevor and Stan 

09:11 Challenges in Understanding Consumers 

16:58 The Evolution of Influencers 

18:32 Limitations of Surveys and the Need for AI 

25:46 Augmented Intelligence: AI + Human Insight 

31:46 Challenges in CPG Innovation 

33:02 Innovate: A Data-Driven Product 

34:42 AI and Predictive Analytics 

36:21 Democratizing Data Access 

38:07 Mindset Shift for Rapid Actions 

40:46 Adopting AI in CPG 

48:16 Retailers and Data Utilization 

52:59 Future of Brand Understanding 

57:23 Conclusion and Contact Information 

58:15 Show Close

Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar is an NRF Top Retail Voices for 2025 & a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2021 – 2025. Thinkers 360 has named him a Top 10 Retail, & AGI Thought Leader, a Top 50 Management, Transformation, & Careers Thought Leader, a Top 100 Digital Transformation & Agentic AI Thought Leader, plus a Top Digital Voice for 2024 and 2025. He is an advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and the Retail Cloud Alliance. He was most recently the director partner marketing for retail & consumer goods in the Americas at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, is CEO of Luxlock, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert from 2023 - 2025, and a Retail Cloud Alliance advisory council member. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech! Currently, Casey is the North America Leader for Retail & Consumer Goods at CI&T.

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Overclocked, and E-Motive from the album Beat Hype, written by Heston Mimms, published by Imuno.