Tap into Real Consumer Behaviour From Social Media With AI

By YouScan

  • article
  • AI
  • Social Media Listening/Intelligence

Social listening has evolved beyond simple monitoring of online conversations to now enable deeper understanding of consumer behaviour through AI-powered analysis of both text and visual content. At a recent Next Generation Insights Summit presentation, Anna Yanko, Marketing Director at YouScan, explored how these advanced capabilities are transforming consumer research.

Watch the webinar replay here:

Social media listening involves monitoring and analysing online conversations in real-time and historically to understand consumer opinions, preferences, and behaviours. This methodology helps brands improve decision-making and product development based on actual consumer needs through several key applications.

Key Applications of Social Media Listening

  • Uncover consumer insights: analyse online conversations to identify unmet needs, pain points, and desires expressed organically by consumers, including how cultural perspectives influence choices.
  • Manage brand reputation: monitor positive and negative mentions, analyse product-specific feedback, and address potential issues proactively.
  • Analyse emerging trends: track evolving consumer values, beliefs, and lifestyles.
  • Competitive analysis: examine competitors through the lens of the consumer.

Modern Social Media Listening Capabilities 

Advanced AI technology has transformed social media listening, enabling three key capabilities:

  • Visual analysis: AI can analyse images and videos to understand how products are used in real-life situations, including identifying brand logos, scenes, objects, and activities.
  • Pattern recognition: AI helps identify genuine user mentions and filter out commercial posts or bot-generated content, improving data quality.
  • Multilingual analysis: current platforms can analyse content in over 90 languages, though challenges remain in detecting nuances like sarcasm.

Real-World Application: LEGO Case Study

To demonstrate YouScan’s Insights Copilot – a generative AI assistant that enables users to query social listening data directly – the platform analysed LEGO’s social media presence in April 2025.

Key findings included:

  • Security and pricing: discussions about security measures in stores, particularly regarding high-value LEGO sets being locked in display cases. This highlighted consumer perceptions about product value and pricing concerns.
  • Brand sentiment: sentiment analysis showed that while most mentions (89%) were neutral, among emotional mentions, 54% were positive. Design emerged as a key strength in consumer discussions, while price sensitivity was a recurring concern.
  • Adult fan community: adult LEGO fans (AFOLs) emerged as an active fan community, with over 100,000 mentions and 18 million engagements primarily on YouTube and TikTok. This segment uses LEGO in multiple ways: as a form of meditation and self-expression, as a community builder, and as both a hobby and decorative element.

Through AI-powered analysis of text, sentiment, and visual content, YouScan was able to identify not just what consumers say about LEGO, but how they interact with the products in their daily lives.

Key Takeaways

Modern social listening pairs AI analysis with human interpretation to reveal how people truly interact with products. It captures both textual and visual expressions across social platforms, providing deeper insights into cultural trends and behavioural patterns, helping brands better understand and respond to current consumer needs in ways traditional research alone cannot achieve.

Author

Scroll to Top