Prosper Insights & Analytics: "Consumer Intent" Analytics That Drive Business Outcomes

John Sydnor, Executive VP & COO

Albert Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience”. Einstein’s idea extends to and represents a reality of life which dictates that knowledge is the most important key to success. The success of an Ohio based company, Prosper Insights & Analytics, serves as the perfect metaphor to corroborate the above notion. The company carries a cumulative experience of nearly 27 years which its founders have invested in research and consumer centric analytics, creating unique and predictive datasets on consumer behavior. With their profound understanding of behavioral economics and the belief that consumer experience is the prime driver of a business, they launched Prosper Insights & Analytics around 17 years ago. Since then, the company has continually delivered consumer insights and analytics using its unique datasets that have helped numerous companies achieve their business goals. “Over the years, Prosper has created one of the most unique, accurate and predictive datasets in the world on the intent of the consumer and their actual resulting behavior,” extols John Sydnor, Executive Vice President & COO of the firm. The four foundational pillars of the company’s business model are financial services (credit card transaction firms, hedge funds, asset managers, quants) marketing technology services companies, retail and branding firms, and customized analytic solutions.

One of the striking differences between Prosper and other data providers is that they focus on future factors pertaining to the consumer’s experience— more directly consumer’s intent and purchase behavior—while others focus on historical data such as sales transaction, social media data or marketing data. The company works with some of the most renowned consumer behaviorists and behavioral economists around the world to develop astute data algorithms and methodologies.

Prosper uses their unique, accurate and predictive datasets to develop target consumer personas and valuable propensity models

Prosper places consumer's input at the center of its analysis as it collects data from Chinese and U.S. markets to build datasets. Consumer-centric datasets capture insights such as purchase intentions, the factors that influenced the purchase decision, their satisfaction level, and the probability of buying the products or services in the future. The open-ended questionnaires designed by the company capture far more important consumer data than typical market surveys, including how their mood and sentiment is affected by economic and political views, and the corresponding propensity to buy goods and services. Leveraging its datasets, Prosper employs advanced algorithms to create unique consumer personas and dynamic psychographic profiles that help companies build successful execution strategies to meet their business needs. The company also aids its clients by providing them deeper insights into their consumer’s needs based on geographical location preferences.

Prosper offers its services in various models such as via a subscription model, wherein it regularly tailors its platform— InsightCenter—to answer client queries. By logging into the company’s portal, clients can view continuously updated data analytics or be notified when key metrics change. Clients with in-house sophisticated analytical resources can utilize Prosper's syndicated datasets, which is refreshed on a monthly basis; clients can further aggregate Prosper’s dataset with their own or other datasets to derive additional insights. Prosper also provides services that complement client’s transaction data. By aggregating client’s transaction data (which is a lagging indicator) with Prosper's datasets, clients enable a “forward looking” 360-degree view of consumer behaviors and spending patterns. The service is intended to help clients enhance their ability to create effective target consumer personas and suggest ways on how to best reach them. In many cases, the company also develops highly customized research reports as per client requirements.

“We are currently investing in enhancing Prosper’s systematic approach to discovering analytics that can enhance local profiling of consumers, and create compelling and accurate propensity models that drive value for our clients,” Sydnor adds. In addition, Prosper believes their datasets are some of the most unique in the world and the most strategic enterprises realize that “the consumer” is the most important shareholder they have and they need to know more about them!