Market research is the foundation of any successful business. Within the healthcare industry, it helps us to better understand perceived strengths and weaknesses of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, gain a better understanding of key stakeholder wants and needs, gain a better understanding of the industry and competitive market space, gain a better understanding of advertising campaigns and promotions, and create fair and profitable pricing strategies. Let’s address each of these areas individually.

(Of course, feel free to skip to the end for a list of healthcare/pharma conferences and podcasts!)

Better Understand the Product Strengths and Weaknesses

At the heart of a successful business is a carefully researched and designed product or service that meets the key needs of its target audience. By conducting well designed surveys and product/sensory tests via IHUTs or Central Location Tests, you can understand:

• What needs does your product meet and what unmet needs need additional development?
• What features of the product are unique within the broader, competitive category and can serve as your unique selling points?
• How is the product correctly and incorrectly used suggesting needs for training or redesign?
• How is your product used in unanticipated ways such that new needs or audiences could be addressed?
• Does the memorability of your product require improvements in terms of its features, branding, colors, or logos?
• Should certain product lines be expanded or reduced based on growing or decreasing market needs?

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    Review a product case study:

• Understanding the Relative Importance of Healthcare Imaging Features for New Product Development – Survey + MaxDiff

Better Understand the People: Patients, Caregivers, Physicians, Healthcare Workers, Payers

While a quality product or service is being build, it’s important to understand the perceptions of all key stakeholders. From users to buyers and those who will be recommending the product, it’s imperative that each group understand the strengths and weaknesses of the product in order to ensure maximum success. Using questionnaires, business intelligence, and secondary research, there are a number of key questions you will need to understand about your key stakeholders:

• Who is your target audience in terms of their demographic, psychographic, family, social, economic, and health characteristics?
• How does the patient journey evolve from the onset of symptoms through to diagnosis, treatment, management, and recovery while understanding medical, emotional, financial, and social needs and situations?
• What personal experiences do patients have within the category including adverse events from your brand and competitive brands?
• Which stakeholders come into contact with your treatments, medical devices, or healthcare facilities e.g., buyers, administrators, payers, technicians, clinicians, patients, families?
• What does each stakeholder group need, want, feel, and prefer?
• What drives each key stakeholder group to choose, use, buy, and recommend your brand vs competitive brands, e.g., clinicians, patients, payers, buyers, sellers
• Which stakeholders will influence your target audience to consider using or buying treatments, medical devices, or facilities?

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    Review a stakeholder case study

• Mapping a Patient Funnel to Mitigate Treatment Barriers – Cancer patient surveys
• Tracking Physician Perceptions of Diabetes Pharmaceutical Representatives – Physician surveys
• Understanding Patient Preferences to Inform Differentiation Strategy – Medical device patient surveys
• Face-to-Face On-Site Medical Leader Interviews – A B2B interview case study

Better Understand the Placement, Industry, and Competitive Market Space

Every product or service exists within a broad ecosystem of competitive brands and companies. By conducting questionnaires or secondary desk research, you can understand a wide range of business problems such as:

• Who are your primary and secondary competitors locally, globally, and virtually?
• What product, physical, emotional, social, and economic needs is the market needs failing to address?
• How has the competitive landscape changed over the last year and how might it forecast into the next 3 to 5 years within your country and potential expansion countries?
• Where are the white spaces to develop new products, extend services, or open new locations?
• Can secondary data help us understand how large our existing market is and how large it could be while remaining profitable?

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   Review a market case study

• Building a Strategic Business Plan Grounded in Industry Data – Pharma data analytics
• Stretching Brand Equity into White Spaces Using Data Fusion – Pharma data analytics

Better Understand Promotions, Advertising, and Campaigns

With a great product or service built and the target audience well understood, a marketing campaign is normally required to reach out to the target audience and introduce them to your offering. Using questionnaires or data analytics, a number of key questions can be answered:

• Which online and offline information channels do your users and buyers use to learn about new products, gather recommendations, or make purchases?
• What types of messaging would be most successful at reaching your target audience and differentiating your brand from competitors?
• What types of ads would be most effective with each of your audience segments when considering likability, meaningfulness, believability and the likelihood to act?
• What types of healthcare marketing campaigns are more likely to be successful?
• What types of brands, companies, or influencers would your users and buyers like to be incorporated in an integrated marketing campaign?
• Which concepts are most memorable and would generate the most action from your target audience?

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   Review an advertising case study:

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Campaign with Brand and Message Recall – Consumer media survey

Create A Fair and Profitable Pricing Strategy

There is more to pricing than picking a number that will generate profit. A price that is too high can reduce physician recommendations and insurance coverage. A price that is too low leaves achievable profit on the table. A final price can only be determined by understanding your true profit margin, market pricing, and stakeholder needs. To build the most effective pricing strategy for your medical device, pharmaceutical product, or service, conduct the appropriate surveys, interviews, and secondary research first.

• Based on secondary research, how are competitive products on the market currently priced?
• Using questionnaire data, what type of pricing strategy is most appealing to healthcare administrators and payers?
• What type of pricing strategy would facilitate product recommendations from clinicians and physicians?
• Which user segment has the least and the greatest revenue potential?
• Based on a Conjoint or MaxDiff questionnaire, which product features drive higher and lower prices?
• Which set of product features would drive the most profit?
• What type of pricing strategy is fair for and accessible versus out of reach to patients?

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   Review a pricing case study

• Optimizing Trade Promotion Spends With A Pricing Simulator
• Identifying Optimum Price Corridors to Predict Volume Share – Advertising price simulator
• Optimizing Treatment Pricing Strategies For Multiple Patient Segments – Pharmaceutical survey analytics

Conclusion

Building a successful medical, pharmaceutical, or healthcare product or service requires a foundation of well designed and executed research coupled with well analyzed and actioned results. Whether you’re tasked with supporting the growth of an innovative new brand or helping a company understand their buyers and their business, our team has more than ten years of experience helping researchers, marketers, and brand managers generate great quality healthcare data and insights for the questions outlined above. Please feel free to email your project specifications to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com. We’d love to help!

Learn at upcoming healthcare industry conferences

• Future of Pharma Marketing Summit 2022: January 25 to 26, 2022
• Pharma Multi-Channel Excellence: January 26, 2022
• Joe Public Retreat: Nashville, February 7 to 9, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference 2022: Newark, February 9 to 10, 2022
• Medicare Marketing Sales Summit (MMSS): Las Vegas, February 16 to 18, 2022
• Pharma CI: Zurich, March 24 to 25, 2022
• Annual PMRG/Intellus Summit: April
• DTC National: Boston, April 20 to 21, 2022
• Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD): Maryland, May 4 to 6, 2022
• Pharma Marketing Summit: Boston, May 12 to 13, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference: Bay Area, Summer, 2022
• Annual EphMRA Conference 2022: June 21 to 23, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference: Europe, Fall, 2022
• Pharma CI: Newark, September 21 to 22, 2022
• OTC National: October

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Listen to some great podcasts about healthcare marketing

• The Medical Marketing Podcast on Google Podcasts
• MM+M Podcast: Medical Marketing and Media Podcast on Spotify
• Healthcare Insight for Marketers True North Custom on Apple Podcasts
• Patient Convert Podcast: Healthcare Marketing on Apple Podcasts
• Healthcare Rap on Acast Podcasts
• Insight Marketing Group Podcast
• Syneos Health Podcast on PlayerFM
• RX Digital Marketing Podcast on PlayerFM
• The Pharma Marketing Podcast on PlayerFM
• Pharmacy Marketing Simplified
• Pharma Marketing 411 on Apple Podcasts

Research Objective

• The client needed to optimize their pricing strategy by understanding perceptions of prices held by consumer segments towards an inhaler product.
• They also needed to understand GPs’ selection of COPD treatments, and payer reception to various prices, rebate schemes, and complete offers within the portfolio.

Scope & Methodology

• The consumer market was segmented into distinct customer groups based on purchase behavior and paying potential. Each segment estimated various prices of inhalers.
• GPs indicated their intent to recommend various brands in each patient segment at each price.
• Optimum prices were identified for each segment.

Value Delivered

• The client successfully launched a new inhaler in a competitive market with optimized pricing that maximized the opportunity. It quickly gained popularity.
• The client was able to price their product optimally to avoid losing sales and to maximize profit margins

Check out other healthcare case studies

• Tracking Physician Perceptions of Diabetes Pharmaceutical Representatives – A physician survey case study
• Face-to-Face On-Site Medical Leader Interviews – A B2B interview case study
• Building a Strategic Business Plan Grounded in Industry Data – A pharmaceutical data analytics case study

Research Objective

• The pharma company needed to optimize channel effectiveness by understanding physician/sales rep interactions, in particular related to what their product does, how it can be best used, and physical aids used.
• They also needed to understand pain points that physicians face during interactions to improve marketing materials and prescription process.

Scope & Methodology

A survey was used to measure:

• Product knowledge displayed by sales reps
• Preferences for Type 2 diabetes treatments
• Marketing messages of GLP-1 treatments for Type 2 Diabetes
• Reasons for not prescribing GLP-1 treatments and brands

Value Delivered

• The research helped the pharma company understand marketing messages recalled by physicians for each product and how it impacted their prescription patterns.
• They were able to understand the pain points physicians experienced during interactions with their pharma reps with particular regards to Type 2 diabetes treatments.

Check out other patient case studies

• Optimize Treatment Pricing Strategies For Multiple Patient Segments – A pharmaceutical survey analytics case study
• Mapping a Patient Funnel to Mitigate Treatment Barriers – A cancer patient survey case study
• Understanding Patient Preferences to Inform Differentiation Strategy – A medical device patient survey case study

Research Objective

• The healthcare client needed to map the patient journey from symptom to diagnosis, treatment, and recovery in order to create patient segments that could be used to leverage market opportunities that drive and influence treatment decisions.
• They needed to identify factors influencing brand association and satisfaction, promoting brand prescribing, and brand switching

Scope & Methodology

• Data points included
  • Treatments received by newly diagnosed stage III patients
  • Key unmet needs for unresectable cancer patients who have completed CRT
  • Key patient and administrative reasons unresectable patients have not completed Concurrent & Sequential CRT treatment

Value Delivered

• The client was able to identify the most likely patient segments who would benefit from a treatment.
• Emotional and physical barriers leading to unmet needs were identified and redirected to leverage new opportunities for prescribing practices.

Check out other healthcare case studies

• Tracking Physician Perceptions of Diabetes Pharmaceutical Representatives – A physician survey case study
• Face-to-Face On-Site Medical Leader Interviews – A B2B interview case study
• Building a Strategic Business Plan Grounded in Industry Data – A pharmaceutical data analytics case study

Research Objective

• A medical device client needed to understand the market and consumer preferences for different medical treatments to inform and customize product messaging and product differentiation.
• They also needed to understand unmet needs and barriers hindering treatment choices.

Scope & Methodology

A survey was designed to measure a number of key metrics including:

• Market leaders in medical device technologies
• Brand switching patterns
• Changes in restriction levels
• Change in usage of two treatments as a result of new device guidelines

The data showed patients had clear preferences for specific brands of medical devices. In addition, patients differentiated the brands based on their perceptions of clinical performance, training programs, range of treatment options, and how much the brands invested in clinical trials.

Value Delivered

• As a result of the research, the client gained a better understanding of their market position relative to their competitors, and was able to gauge market shifts in the treatments used by patients. They also were able to better understand drivers of switching and the key decision makers involved in those switches.
• The client was better able to differentiate their product and create more impactful messaging to help their patients.

Check out other patient case studies

• Optimize Treatment Pricing Strategies For Multiple Patient Segments – A pharmaceutical survey analytics case study
• Mapping a Patient Funnel to Mitigate Treatment Barriers – A cancer patient survey case study