The collaboration brings academic research and industry experience together to explore how synthetic data can support consumer insights and business decisions in Hong Kong and across Asia-Pacific.
Preferences AI partnered with City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and The Marketing Society to bring academic research and industry experience together around the use of synthetic data in market research.
The collaboration brought the three organisations together for the Marketing Exchange Forum at the Hong Kong Fringe Club on 21 September 2026. Under the theme "Synthetic Data: The Myths, the Truths, and the Real Opportunities", the event connected marketing and insights leaders with academics and practitioners to examine how the technology can support business decisions.
Preferences AI's Co-Founder and CEO Tamir Abdel-wahab delivered the keynote, exploring how synthetic consumer panels are built, where they can add value, and how businesses should assess their reliability. The discussion focused on the real data behind a panel and whether its synthetic consumers reflect the market being studied.
Professors Vivian Zheng and Camilla Eunyoung Song contributed academic perspectives on synthetic data, while Kelly Lui of Blancmond and Wilson Tai of FundFluent shared experiences from business practice. Together, the sessions examined a practical question for marketers: which decisions can synthetic consumer insights reliably inform?
Alongside the forum, Preferences AI is collaborating with Professor Camilla Eunyoung Song in CityUHK's Department of Marketing to explore the use and reliability of synthetic data. This work connects questions about how synthetic populations are constructed with their potential applications in academic research and commercial decision-making.
Link to the event details: here.
