November 2006
	Guest Editorial: The Wal-Martization of Healthcare – The Growing Role of Value for Consumers By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Health Economist and Forecaster, THINK-Health The news that Wal-Mart will discount generic drug prescriptions to $4 is yet another signpost on Americans’ migration toward consumer-directed healthcare. While forecasts for consumer-directed care have been plentiful and bullish, this marketplace wild card directly impacts pharmaceutical marketing. As other pharmacy retailers fall domino-like into Wal-Mart’s discount tactic, healthcare marketers should realize the importance of this event, understand its implications and plan for market impacts: consumer perception of the value of pharmaceutical drugs; the demand for transparency; and consumers’ retail mind-set. Brave New World: Consumer-Directed Healthcare To place Wal-Mart’s move in a larger context, let’s take a step back to see the landscape: Americans are being thrust into a new healthcare environment referred to as consumer-driven healthcare (CDHC). The objective of CDHC is to help plan sponsors ­ employers, who foot the bill for private-sector employees, and the public sector (federal and state governments) ­ stem the rising costs of healthcare. The tactics of CDHC include having consumers put more financial “skin in the game.” Thus, over the past year, a growing number of employees covered by health insurance are paying more out of pocket for health premiums, co-pays for office visits and greater co-pays for prescription drugs. More Adverse Event Reporting: New Observations & Guidelines on Establishing “Guidelines” As we revisit the topic of Adverse Event Reporting (AER) in our second published document exploring issues in this area, we share with you a number of new happenings. These include looking at the dynamics of the confusion that ensues when individual pharmaceutical companies issue their own Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), while, simultaneously, industry organizations are busily investing substantial amounts of time and effort into formulating their own “position statements” and “guidelines” related to the role of marketing research in the reporting of Adverse Events (AEs). We caution against these organizations’ expectations that pharmaceutical companies will use these guidelines as a basis for reconsidering or revamping their own very carefully considered SOPs. However, if these organizations can work in close cooperation to establish one coherent set of guidelines, it may well be of value in assisting small and medium size marketing research agencies in understanding and complying with pharmaceutical client companies’ SOPs. So, we suggest efforts should accordingly be focused here, rather than looking to shape client-side policies and procedures. Finally, as part of a “reality check,” we also share a number of interesting experiences that the GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies have encountered with AEs over the last month alone, which shed light on some important lessons to be learned by client and agency-side marketing researchers alike. More What is the Ideal Sales Rep? SFE Study Data Sheds Light on Topic For those charged with planning and evaluating their company’s Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) efforts, there is a genuine need for current data and trends affecting the area, which is becoming increasingly important in the pharmaceutical industry. GfK Market Measures is intent on filling this void and helping those directly involved in SFE by conducting annual studies on the topic with physicians, sales representatives and district managers. GfK Market Measures recently discussed its 2006 study findings during a free teleconference entitled, The Ideal Sales Rep: Identifying How Physicians and Sales Reps Prioritize Key Selling Attributes, for clients in October. Nearly 700 physicians (covering primary care and a variety of specialties), 80 sales representatives and 20 district managers participated in this year’s study, which involved both qualitative and quantitative research methods. More Free Teleconference: Changing the Metabolic Paradigm – November 15, 2:00 to 3:15 p.m. EST How do you handle a condition affecting millions worldwide when there is no set definition or widely accepted treatment criteria? Learn how physicians, patients and managed care are dealing with the complicated nature of "metabolic syndrome" at GfK Market Measures' new free teleconference, Changing the Metabolic Paradigm, to be held Wednesday, November 15 from 2:00 to 3:15 p.m. EST. Register today! More Did You Miss the Premiere of Topline Last Month? Click here to catch up now				Beyond Preferred Vendor and Master Service Agreements: Marketing Research by “Agency of Record” Against the backdrop of a long history of both informal and formal processes for selecting a marketing research vendor, beginning with a point in time where a client researcher actually had the freedom to make his or her own vendor selection, evolving to “Preferred Vendor Lists” and then “Master Service Agreements,” some pharmaceutical companies are beginning to experiment with a new, and I believe if appropriately executed, potentially very beneficial model. The “Agency Of Record” model has started appearing on our radar, and I believe it to be the important next step in establishing a win-win relationship between pharmaceutical companies and marketing research agencies... More Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. Group Chief Executive Officer GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies Recommended Resource: Globe Hopping? Review Our Best Practices for International Marketing Research It's a big, diverse, multicultural world: There are about 190 countries on the planet, with 13 major religions and 250 major languages. Outside of the U.S., the main markets for pharmaceutical products are Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain, so these are the countries on which most pharmaceutical product manufacturers focus their efforts. Over the years, GfK V2 and GfK Strategic Marketing have conducted pharmaceutical marketing research in all of these countries, and many more, gaining a great deal of knowledge along the way. Knowing that this information would be useful to clients, the company collected insights into the things that have worked well while conducting research, along with the things that didn't, and developed an informative resource called Best Practices for Global Pharmaceutical Marketing Research. More