Master Thesis - AI Personas for Innovation Decision-Making

Essity is exploring how Generative AI can enable the creation of synthetic consumer and customer personas to help teams rapidly test product concepts, packaging designs, and innovation ideas before traditional market research. The master's thesis aims to explore whether AI-generated personas can become a trusted decision-support tool for innovation and concept testing. The student(s) will design and develop a prototype application that generates, manages, and enables interaction with synthetic personas based on existing consumer insight data, and will investigate how these personas can be validated against real-world consumer research. Expected outcomes include a prototype application, a persona generation methodology, a validation framework, experimental results comparing synthetic and historical research outcomes, and recommendations for future implementation within Essity. The thesis is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, with approximately 40-60% on-site presence in a hybrid setup. Applications must be submitted online; email applications are not accepted due to GDPR. If applying as a pair, submit one application each and state in the application who you intend to complete the thesis with.

Responsibilities

Help design and develop a prototype application capable of generating and interacting with AI-powered consumer personas; Investigate how personas can be evaluated and validated; Develop a working AI application using modern Generative AI technologies; Explore how consumer insights can be transformed into synthetic personas; Collaborate with business stakeholders; Design validation methodologies; Contribute to future innovation capabilities

Requirements

Currently studying at Master level at a Swedish University; Conducting a Master Thesis during spring 2027; Interest in Artificial Intelligence, software development, data analytics, and innovation; Studying a relevant field such as Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Machine Learning, Industrial Engineering & Management, Applied Mathematics, Human-Computer Interaction, or Business Analytics

Nice to have

Experience with Python; Experience with Generative AI; Experience with LLMs; Experience with statistics; Experience with software development