March 2007
       
Customer-Driven Positioning: The Next Generation Approach to Pharmaceutical Product Positioning
According to the seminal work, Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout, “positioning is where the company wants its product to be placed in the customer’ s mind so that it will achieve optimal utilization.” Positioning is the fundamental basis for brand marketing strategy; it is the foundation of marketing a product, an internal statement of purpose that informs and drives the development of all subsequent marketing communications. But establishing the pharmaceutical brand position – the advantageous location that a product owns in the minds of physicians – is one of the most challenging components of marketing campaign development.

One reason the task is so difficult is that when using traditional marketing research methodologies to develop position statements, brand teams expose study respondents (physicians) to fully formed messages that mingle clinical and emotional benefits with “aspirational” claims, often incorporating idealistic utilization demands, e.g., use us first-line. The problem here is that physicians are unable to unravel, and thus understand and appreciate, the meaning of these complex messages and often reject them due to a weak link.

While this process has been used for years, it is clearly driven by the pharmaceutical company and not the customer. An alternative approach, which more closely reflects the process by which physicians truly want to engage and learn about a new pharmaceutical product, is called Customer-Driven Positioning (CDP).

Using Survey Research and GIS to Make Geodemographic Patient Segmentation Work
Most marketers are familiar with geodemographic segmentation, where small geographies such as census tracts, zip codes or neighborhoods are clustered into relatively homogeneous groups with similar demographic profiles. Commercial geodemographic segmentation systems such as PRIZM, MOSAIC and ACORN, have been around for 30 years or so, and typically contain thousands of neighborhoods across the United States grouped in 50 to 60 clusters with suggestive names like “Enterprising Couples,” “Dream Weavers” and “Upscale Suburbanites.” The basic idea behind these systems is that “birds of a feather flock together” – so that marketing efforts tailored to the dominant demographic characteristics in an area can be effective.

While popular for direct marketing to consumers, these systems are often criticized because their exclusive focus on demographics and lifestyle factors ignores many other important attitudinal and behavioral factors relevant to consumer purchase decisions. Since most geodemographic segmentation systems focus on overall general population characteristics rather than populations at risk for or diagnosed with a specific disease, they are also not typically used for patient segmentation. Nevertheless, both geography and demographics are important factors in pharmaceutical marketing. The prevalence of many diseases correlates strongly with demographics such as race/ethnicity and age, e.g., HIV, diabetes and Alzheimer’ s disease. Physician prescribing patterns and patient brand preferences differ across geographic regions. Pharmaceutical sales forces are deployed and managed on a geographical basis. Pricing and reimbursement practices vary significantly across states.

This article, authored by Doug Willson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Marketing Science at GfK Strategic Marketing, describes how to combine primary survey research, secondary data and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to develop and deploy actionable geodemographic segmentation solutions in pharmaceutical markets.


Client/Agency Relationships: An Era of
Far More Formality, Yet Less Partnering
In this month’ s published document for The Orange Pages (please reference the close of this article if you are not familiar with this resource), we examine the evolution of the relationship between pharmaceutical company marketing researchers and the pharmaceutical marketing research agencies that service them.

As we take a brief look at how pharmaceutical companies have tried to “gain better control” of their vendors, based on the advice of consulting companies seeking to help restructure their processes, we make observations on the resulting impact of these initiatives upon the relationship between clients and their marketing research agencies. More specifically, with the advent of the Three-Bid System several years ago, followed more recently by Master Service and Preferred Provider Agreements, we have entered into an era in which such relationships are far more formal, yet far less partnered, than in previous times. There are several reasons for this state of affairs, several considerations in dealing with it and several perspectives that, if brought into consideration, could go a long way toward improving what arguably is a less than optimal set of circumstances.

This article examines the good and the bad in the evolution of the relationship between clients and the agencies that service them. Furthermore, the content explores several factors that seem to indicate that, for many kinds of research, the next natural phase in this relationship may in fact be a type of “Do-it-Yourself Marketing Research,” whereby we see an increased internalization of the marketing research function, i.e. pharmaceutical company marketing researchers conducting their own primary research, rather than contracting with marketing research agencies to do so.


New Leadership Appointment: Brian Hull
Named President of GfK Strategic Marketing


The GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies is proud to announce the appointment of Brian Hull, M.B.A, as the new President of GfK Strategic Marketing. Brian takes on the leadership role following the departure of Marty Glogowski, a 30-year pharmaceutical marketing research industry veteran, who last month announced his retirement. Brian joins GfK Strategic Marketing from GfK V2, where he served as Executive Vice President and Strategic Business Unit Head.


Did You Miss the February Issue of Topline?

Click here to read the issue, which includes:
  • Practical information on how to improve the "presentation" of marketing research information
  • An article on critical issues surrounding patient persistence
  • Richard Vanderveer's views on "What’ s it Like to Be a Physician? "

Looking Back and Moving Forward: Rigging Pharmaceutical Marketing Research
for the Future

The first quarter of 2007 is drawing to a close, and it’ s a good time to think about what we have seen so far this year in our part of the pharmaceutical marketing research world and whether it reflects change and/or progress from 2006. Some things seem to have calmed down and lost their intensity over recent quarters, both in substance and logistics, but much remains the same.

The first thing that comes to mind is the interest level, or rather increasing lack thereof, in Longitudinal Patient Data. Just two years ago, conferences and seminars were held almost weekly on this topic, and most were heavily attended. Several companies offered competing databases, and articles and advertisements on the topic were everywhere. In fact, it was the only new marketing research tool to garner interest in a long time.

Unfortunately, while we did learn some interesting new information about patient persistence, brand switching, concomitant therapy, etc., these new data sets did not permit us to obtain enough added value to redirect our marketing programs. Thus, as the months have progressed, while some pharmaceutical companies are still purchasing these data, they have not caused the paradigm shift that individual physician-level prescribing did a decade earlier, and their chatter value has diminished significantly.

Amazingly, the same thing has happened with pharmaceutical marketing and marketing research applications of the Internet, e-detailing and other interactive and/or electronic media. When the Internet first appeared on the scene, it seemed like it was going to revolutionize pharmaceutical marketing to physicians and patients alike. Scroll forward to 2006-2007...

Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D.
Group Chief Executive Officer
GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies



Recommended Resource:
Hepatology - An Important New Frontier in Pharmaceutical Development
Hepatology – the study of liver diseases – represents a clinically important, dynamic and lucrative arena of pharmaceutical development. The opportunity in this therapeutic sector stems from the growing population of patients worldwide afflicted by common liver ailments such as viral hepatitis (including hepatitis C and hepatitis B) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Several unmet therapeutic needs within each of these liver injuries constitute major opportunities for drug development.

In a recent Product Management Today article, Noah M. Pines, GfK V2 Executive Vice President and Viral Diseases Expert, discusses key trends, unmet therapeutic needs and investigational drug candidates in development for these common liver ailments.