The Emerging Consumer Index (ECI) is Rival's syndicated research on emerging consumers: young adults aged 18 to 30 in the United States and Canada. Each wave is fielded to verified members of Rival's proprietary panel and combines quantitative results with written and video open-ended answers. Waves are fielded twice a month, and each one builds on the ones before it.
Every wave asks the same 16 core questions, covering life stage, financial reality, spending behaviour, daily context, connection and well-being. It also includes two rotating modules drawn from six: money and trade-offs, work and ambition, brands and value, media and trust, AI and the future, and identity and belonging. That lets you see what has held steady and what has changed.
This article covers the free trial: what it includes, how access works, and how to find your way around. If you're interested in getting access to the free trial, reach out to your Rival representative.
What the free trial includes
Your trial focuses on Wave 6 (fielded September 9 to 15, 2026, with 643 respondents). It includes:
The Wave 6 interactive report, with comparisons to earlier waves where a question was asked before
The wiki, which holds the evidence behind every claim in the report, along with the question wording, base sizes and methodology
The Co-pilot and Discuss, which answer questions from the study data
14 days of access, with 20 questions per day shared across Discuss and the Co-pilot
What a full subscription adds
A full ECI subscription goes further than the trial:
Access for the length of your subscription, instead of 14 days
No daily question limit
Every wave, earlier and newer, each with its own report and wiki
Contact your Rival representative if you'd like to talk about subscribing.
How access works
Your Rival contact tells you to expect an email.
You receive an email from no-reply@labs-rivaltech.com with your access details. Check spam or junk if you don't see it.
Follow the link and sign in with the temporary password, then update it to a password of your own.
Accept the terms and conditions.
Your trial starts when you accept the terms and conditions, not when the email is sent. If the email sits in your inbox for a few days, you lose nothing.
Find your way around
ECI has two views, which you switch between at the top of the page: Report and Wiki. The chat icon at the top right opens the Co-pilot from either view.
Report is a chaptered, interactive read of what Wave 6 found. It opens with the executive verdict and works through what Wave 6 shows, what it means for a brand conversation, the data you can explore, the central tension, opportunities, what the data can and can't support, and recommended next steps. It closes with the methodology. Open the chapter menu (top left) to jump to any chapter.
Each insight in the report has an evidence-strength label and two buttons:
Evidence opens the claim, how strong the evidence is, anything to read first, and the supporting numbers with their question codes and base sizes, along with respondents' own comments and video where available.
Discuss opens a conversation about that one insight, so you can ask follow-up questions with the context already loaded.
Links marked "Open" take you straight to the wiki page behind a finding.
Wiki is the evidence layer behind the report. It is organised into:
Synthesis: the executive summary, key findings, tensions and contradictions, and opportunities and implications
Themes: the main stories in the data, such as money pressure and careful spending, and why trust is personal and hard to win
Questions: a page for every question the study asked, showing the exact wording, who was asked and base sizes. That includes the core questions asked every wave and the rotating modules.
Segments: Americans and Canadians, and financially pressured young adults
Methodology: research design, weighting, analysis, and limitations and bias
Project notes and a glossary
Co-pilot is an AI driven evidence assistant. You can ask a question about the study and it answers only from the wiki, with links to the pages it used so you can check the source.
Need help or want to upgrade?
Contact your Rival representative.