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 The New Global Marketplace: Expanded Opportunities With the "E7" Countries
Likely, you are familiar with the "G5" countries (the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain),
which as a block make up a significant percentage of
most pharmaceutical product markets - United States
and Japan aside - and thus are appropriately
included in the majority of global pharmaceutical
marketing research projects conducted at the present
time.
But do you know what the "E7" countries are? If not,
you should become familiar with them. According to a
recently published PricewaterhouseCoopers report,
the global pharmaceutical market will double in value
to $1.3 trillion by 2020 with the "E7" countries
collectively accounting for up to 20 percent of this
newly enlarged market, up 60 percent from 2004.
In this month's published document for The
Orange Pages, we look first at the way "global"
marketing research is approached today, reflecting in
brief on its sophistication over past decades when
conducting "international" research meant simply
translating the English version of the questionnaire
into the local language. Second, we define and
discuss the three major dimensions that must be
considered for each country in the conduct of these
increasingly complex global projects: medical and
reimbursement systems, treatment practices and the
logistics of planning and conducting the research
itself.
Finally, we look ahead to the future of the global arena,
examining the predictions made in the recent
PricewaterhouseCoopers report. What are the
challenges and impacts of expanding the global
pharmaceutical market to include the opportunities
in "E7" countries? What recommendations will help
pharmaceutical marketing researchers and top
decision makers prepare for this "brave new world"?
 Lonely? Dr. Max Diff to the Rescue! Benefits of the MaxDiff Approach Over Standard Rating Exercises
By
Shiv Raman, M.A., M.B.A., Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing
Scientist,
GfK V2 I have a terrific idea for an online business in the brave new world of Web 2.0. Let's find out what busy, career-driven singles really want in a partner, what's really important to them and create compatibility metrics to match couples. People would pay anything for such a service, right? It's foolproof! OK. Reality check. According to Wikipedia,
there were
at least 844 lifestyle and dating services at
the end of
2004. That number is likely closer to a
thousand now.
So, not a great business idea in the summer
of 2007,
but I bring this up for another reason. A
quick run
through some of the major dating sites
reveals that
they all require prospective singles to fill
out an online
questionnaire. The questionnaire is presumably
used to develop profiles of the respondents and
thereby identify the kind of people they are
likely to be
compatible with. Many of these questions
measure
the importance of traits such as
intelligence, looks,
sense of humor and so on. But, just how
useful are
such measures of importance? Would anyone rate
any of these attributes as being less
important relative
to the others?
My contrived example illustrates two well-known
issues in the measurement of stated attribute
importance. First is the obvious point that
if our
attributes are all of the "mom and apple pie"
variety,
we are unlikely to detect variation in
responses. This
is the reason online dating sites want to know
whether your idea of a good time involves
dodging
kinkajous and agoutis in the rainforest or
sipping
mojitos at a candle-lit table. Second, even
if attributes
cover a wide spectrum of issues, are such
ratings-based exercises capable of
identifying the top
few
attributes that truly matter?
This latter point is the
premise of this column - that typical,
scale-based
questions to measure stated importance are
seldom
a source of great insight. There are many
reasons for
the poor information content of such tasks,
not the
least of which are a) variations in how
people interpret
and use scales (think Grumpy Gordon with his
fours
and Sunny Sally with her tens) and b) a general
unwillingness on our part to admit that some
things
really are unimportant (Bigger! Better!
Faster! More!)
Russia: A Market With Significant Opportunities
for the Pharmaceutical Industry 
By Marina Bezouglova, GfK Russia and
Dinko Svetopetric, GfK Healthcare London
In recent years there has probably been no
boardroom of an international pharmaceutical
company in which Russia has not been discussed.
With a population of around 143 million (the 7th
largest in the world), and enjoying
rapid economic growth for almost a decade, Russia is
potentially a huge market. The economy is expected to
remain among the fastest growing worldwide. This
has fueled rising personal income and purchasing
power. With current trends it
is expected that Russia will become the largest
economy in Europe by 2020.
Although sales of pharmaceutical products increased
threefold between 2000 and 2005, health spending is
still generally low compared with the developed world.
In 2005, the consumption of drugs was only $46 per
person. Of course, one should not forget the vast
differences between Russian regions. The average of
drug consumption in Moscow, being by far the most
affluent region, was two-and-a-half times higher than
the national average.
In January 2005, new rules governing drug
reimbursement came into force. The government
initially allocated $1.7 billion for the beneficiary drug
provision program in 2005 and $3 billion in 2006. In
2005, the retail market of drugs in Russia showed
one of the highest rates of growth in the world, 38
percent, with a turnover of $6.6 billion (including
beneficiary drug provision). According to the latest
figures, the Russian pharmaceutical market
expanded by 21.3 percent year-on-year at net
manufacturer prices in the first half of 2006. According
to the forecast, by 2010 the Russian pharmaceutical
market will increase by 70 percent to $17 billion.
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 Marketing Research for "Closed-Loop Marketing" The June 2007 issue of MedAdNews carried several articles on the topic of "closed-loop" marketing, i.e., Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives using tablet-based computers to make interactive sales presentations in physicians' offices rather than the static paper-based "detail aids" historically employed. This idea has been around for years, but like so many ideas that were before their time, time eventually catches up to the idea and major companies such as Merck are now choosing one of the four primary vendors of the software designed to support such systems to empower their representatives with this interactive capacity. Conceptually, it should be noted, the use of such software-driven presentations brings both challenges and opportunities. One of the biggest challenges, for example, is getting the pharmaceutical company's regulatory approval committee to sign off on a presentation that could actually be given in many ways based on what questions physicians asked, what presentation elements are used to respond to the questioning, etc. While a learning curve was clearly involved in this area at Merck and at other companies using interactive detailing, this hurdle has apparently not been insurmountable. In terms of opportunities, interactive detailing theoretically offers two significant advantages over traditional detail pieces. First, not only the core presentation but reprints, support pieces and other related information can all be grouped together, allowing a representative to proceed seamlessly and without fumbling to the appropriate information needed to deal with an issue raised by a physician. While this advantage is not only apparent but real, loading too much ancillary information onto the computer can create a genuine problem for the sales training department, which must instruct the representatives when and how to utilize the various information elements. Additionally, it has been found that ancillary information, such as videos of key opinion leaders explaining a particular product feature, must be used judiciously, since they may require more time than the physician has available, the audio component may prove disruptive in a busy office setting, etc...  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. Group Chief Executive Officer GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies   Did You Miss the June Issue of Topline?  Click
here to read the issue, which includes:
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