What type of insight is primarily gathered through social listening?

Gathering insights through social listening primarily focuses on understanding customer sentiment. Social listening involves monitoring and analyzing conversations and mentions across social media platforms, forums, and other online spaces where customers express their opinions and feelings about brands, products, or services. This practice allows marketers to capture the emotional tone, perceptions, and attitudes that customers have in relation to their brand or competitors.

By doing so, companies gain valuable insights into how their audience feels about certain topics, which can inform messaging, product development, customer service strategies, and overall brand positioning. Understanding customer sentiment can lead to more effective engagement strategies and ultimately help in enhancing customer loyalty.

In contrast, the other options relate to quantitative data or metrics rather than qualitative insights. Sales figures, market research costs, and historical sales trends are essential for understanding business performance and operational efficiency, but they do not provide the deep emotional insights that social listening captures.