  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| May 2007 | ||||||||
 Is 30 Really the Magic Number? Determining
Sample Size in Primary Marketing Research 
By Paul Teta, Ph.D., Executive Vice
President, GfK V2
There is a dirty little secret behind sample size decisions: They're subjective. You could spend a lifetime developing theorems, doing power analyses and programming Monte Carlo simulations, but it will never remove the fundamental subjectivity that underlies determining the "right" sample size for a given project. I mean no offense to my colleagues, but few
of us yearned in our youth to become sampling
statisticians. The field is necessarily
steeped in complex mathematical formulae, the
results of which are difficult for the
practitioner to apply when evaluating the
fundamental question of how much is enough.
As a result, we often-far too often-rely on
project budgets to determine how many
respondents to include in research.
Some marketing research suppliers fuel this
reliance by providing multiple sampling
alternatives in their proposals without an
explanation of the trade-offs associated with
each. Let's face it, providing a menu of
sample sizes is more often motivated by a
desire to hedge bets on winning work than it
is on helping clients make informed research
decisions. Absent the detail on margin of
error, the decision maker has nothing to go
on but price. Why would anyone pay more for
the "optimum n" alternative when the
"minimum n" will suffice?
 Research With Pharmacists:
Will It Soon Be "Back to the Future?" 
In this month's published document for The
Orange
Pages, we explore the reemergence of the
pharmacist
as a major player, having an increasingly
unique and
important role in both the delivery of
healthcare and
the marketing of pharmaceutical products.
Several decades ago, prior to the availability of Individual Level Prescription Data, for example, pharmacists were important stakeholders and were detailed (and researched) by many companies as actively as were physicians. Since that time, pharmacists have been largely ignored as a player in pharmaceutical marketing and marketing research, viewed by many as simply technicians who count pills and comply with formularies. In an era when growing numbers of significant
products are "going generic," and multitier
co-pays
and other factors are increasing the
complexity of the
transaction of the patient acquiring the drug,
pharmacists can be expected to play a much more
important role in the front lines of helping
their
patients practice cost-effective medicine.
In fact,
anecdotal reports indicate that the
pharmacist is
already playing an increasing role in
determining what
medication is actually dispensed.
In this article we explore what pharmaceutical
companies can do to build a body of knowledge
on the pharmacist's role and understand more
about the chain pharmacies that do much of the
retail pharmacy dispensing in the United States.
Lessons From a Pharma MR Veteran: High & Low Points, Challenges & Solutions for Our Profession
Interested in learning more about your chosen
career
path in pharmaceutical marketing research?
Get the
perspective of someone who has been "around the
block" a few times. Richard B. Vanderveer,
Ph.D.,
Group CEO of the GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies,
was recently invited by the Pharmaceutical
Business
Intelligence and Research Group (PBIRG) to share
his thoughts as a veteran pharmaceutical
marketing
researcher in a Q&A format interview titled,
Enlightened by a Luminary, for PBIRG's
membership
newsletter, Perspective.
What are the most important high points, or
positive
changes, witnessed by pharmaceutical marketing
researchers over the past decades? Conversely,
what are low points or "decisions-gone-wrong"
that
have had a negative impact on our profession?
What
are the biggest challenges facing
marketing researchers in the current
environment and
what are some proposed solutions to get past
these
hurdles? How can you, individually, and our
profession,
collectively, contribute in the coming years
to making a
significant impact on the pharmaceutical
industry?
Dr. Vanderveer opines on these and other
topics in this informal
discussion with Merck's Evlogi Itsev, Chair
of the
PBIRG Public Relations Committee.
Meet Our New Additions: Senior Leadership
 As a "destination employer" for the industry,
the GfK
U.S. Healthcare Companies continue to draw top
marketing research talent. While our new
researchers
offer clients a variety of methodological and
therapeutic expertise, they share the common
background of being marketing research veterans
with experience specifically focused in the
pharmaceutical industry.
|
 |
|
|
 Can an e-Marketing & Communications Platform Replace the Pharma Sales Force? I remember, distinctly remember, a number of years ago when the Internet first came on the scene in general, and as related to pharmaceutical marketing in particular. With several colleagues, I had the opportunity to run some of the earliest seminars in our industry on the topic of the Internet. At the time, we had to start out each seminar by defining what the Internet was, since many of the 200 to 400 people attending each session had no clue! Nonetheless, interest in the Internet was at a fever pitch, with many of the attendees having been given strict orders by their bosses to get a Web site for their pharmaceutical product up and running as soon as possible but with most of them having little or no idea how to begin, let alone complete, such a task. Presenter after presenter at such conferences opined that almost overnight we would see traditional TV commercials, print advertisements, etc., for all pharmaceutical products dry up, predicting that the World Wide Web would become the only promotional game in town. At the time, "surfing" the Web was a popular activity, with people not just using the Internet to seek out specific information, which was in fact rather difficult to do given the nature of the search engines available at the time, but rather simply wandering from site to site, looking for offerings that were "cool" and "sticky" (i.e., made people spend significant amounts of time on a particular Web site). Pharmaceutical companies proudly offered sites with mission statements and histories, often preceded by graphics that downloaded with painfully slow speed given the dial-up connections used at the time. Things started to get more organized and more complicated, with WebMD and Medcast competing to become the "one-stop shopping" electronic site for physicians and their use of the Web (WebMD eventually beat out, and acquired, Medcast in the process). Special systems, such as IPNI, were introduced that used dedicated hardware to let physicians communicate directly with live representatives...  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. Group Chief Executive Officer GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies   Did You Miss the April Issue of Topline?  Click here to read the issue, which includes:
|
||||
        |
||||||||
   |
||||||||
