NTT DATA announced a successful AI Consumers PoC with Kao Corporation’s makeup brand to simulate consumer behavior and create personas for product development research.

The PoC leveraged NTT DATA’s marketing AI agent service alongside Kao’s consumer research, purchase data, and social media data to develop multiple AI Consumers and an AI interviewer.

The initiative combined Kao’s existing data with NTT DATA’s AI tools to generate AI Consumers and an AI interviewer for product development insights.

Mizuho Mitake of NTT DATA stressed that brands must adapt to weekly consumer trend cycles and highlighted the PoC’s potential to boost agility and growth for consumer brands.

The PoC demonstrated a potential 99% reduction in product development timelines—from about 1.5 months to roughly half a day—enabling deeper consumer insights with fewer recruitment and survey steps.

Relatedly, the project showed a dramatic cut in development cycles and workload, accelerating research while cutting respondent recruitment and survey execution.

The PoC indicates AI can match or surpass traditional research quality while delivering rapid responsiveness to evolving weekly consumer trends.

NTT DATA described its Smart AI Agent concept, where AI agents autonomously extract, organize, and execute tasks in response to user instructions, as part of governance and transformation efforts.

The announcement positions NTT DATA as a leading AI and digital infrastructure provider with a global client base including 75% of the Fortune Global 100, outlining efforts to advance AI literacy, software productivity, and responsible innovation.

NTT DATA stated AI can maintain or exceed traditional research quality while increasing speed and plans to extend AI consumer research results from product development into marketing operations.

The collaboration aims to shorten Kao’s seasonal makeup launch cycles and improve marketing and product strategy decisions through AI-driven insights.

Mizuho Mitake emphasized agility in consumer-brand strategies and outlined plans to expand AI-driven capabilities from product development into marketing operations.