May 2008

Standard and Innovative Methods for Tracking Pharmaceutical Brand Performance
By Noah Pines, Executive Vice President, GfK V2, and Cathy Su, Senior Manager, Market Research, Gilead Sciences

The gates are open and your new medication brand is off and running! The stakes are high. Thousands of hours of meetings, hundreds of millions of dollars not to mention blood, sweat and tears are now being put to the ultimate test by physicians and patients.

At this juncture of high anxiety, one of the pivotal questions faced by the brand team is: What are the best ways to track - and enhance - the performance in the market of this newborn brand?

The purpose of this article is to characterize the gamut of primary marketing research techniques, both standard and innovative, that pharmaceutical companies have at their disposal not only to gauge their products' performance, but also to enhance the early impact a product may have on the market.

Conducting Efficient Marketing Research -
The Most Pressing Need of Our Profession
No doubt, you have heard the phrase "Do more with less" applied to pharmaceutical marketing research countless times. While the expression describes an admirable goal, most of us have focused on the "less" part of this pronouncement. Many marketing researchers now recognize it is not only the fat that has been cut out of the research process, but much of the bone too, as demands for lower prices, rebates, etc., now squeeze agencies to work in ways that produce less than optimal results.

This month's published document for The Orange Pages challenges readers to concentrate on "doing more." The article outlines 10 key steps that, if followed correctly, will transform pharmaceutical marketing research from being one of the first areas hit by budget cuts to an endeavor that actually helps pharmaceutical companies reinvent themselves out of the current, and worsening, perfect storm in which the industry finds itself.

Risk Analysis, Choice Models and Early-Stage Forecasting in Pharmaceutical Markets
By Doug Willson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, GfK Strategic Marketing

While pharmaceutical markets have experienced unprecedented growth over the past few decades, many observers are now concerned about an innovation gap. Fewer and fewer new products are coming to market, and drug development costs are rising rapidly. Moreover, it doesn't appear to be getting any easier after launch. Competitive pressures continue to increase as blockbusters lose patent protection and lower-priced generics become readily available. Regulatory authorities have also become more cautious on safety issues. From a reimbursement perspective, payors are more regularly applying restrictions - prior authorization, step therapy, indication restrictions and quantity limits - before reimbursement can occur. Flat research productivity, rapidly escalating development costs and heightened competitive pressures after launch have clear and troubling implications for profitability across the industry and have increased scrutiny and pressure on development pipelines for many manufacturers.

In this challenging environment, pharmaceutical manufacturers have increasingly turned to early-stage market research to help identify the most promising development options from a commercial perspective, and to provide information about the impact of alternative clinical trial designs and results on future market opportunities.


Preparing for an Evolutionary Pharma Market: GfK's Presentation at the 2008 EphMRA Conference, Friday, June 27
We invite you to join the GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies June 25-27 in Barcelona at the European Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Association's (EphMRA) Annual General Meeting themed A Night at the Movies.

On Friday, June 27, Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D., Group Chief Executive Officer, GfK U.S. Healthcare Companies, will provide a consciousness-raising exploration of the future of pharmaceutical marketing research with a presentation titled, "Conducting Revolutionary Research in Preparation for an Evolutionary Pharmaceutical Market."

Did You Miss the April Issue of Topline?
Click here to read the issue, which includes:

  • Using marketing research to create effective ads
  • Diabetes: perspectives from three patient segments
  • Latin America as a prototype of global pharma marketing research - Part II
  • Data Download research highlights: oncology and diabetes

    • Topline archive now available. Skim the directory and select articles you missed. Access subscriber opt-in/comment form.

    Patient Adherence: Information, Motivation and Aggravation - A Self-Ethnographic Portrait

    In previous presentations and articles, I have frequently commented that patient adherence, i.e., the combination of behaviors involving staying on chronic medications and not abandoning them without doctors' advice, and compliance, i.e. taking the medication as instructed, is finally gaining the attention it deserves in the pharmaceutical industry. Battling it out to be drug of choice for new-start patients on a chronic medication makes little sense in an era when only half the patients you win are on the drug within six months of initiation of therapy, especially since we are attempting to milk every dollar we can out of the limited number of new products being introduced each year.

    Reports of previous studies we have conducted, you will recall, indicate that the major drivers for patient adherence can be classified as information, motivation and aggravation. Sadly, the industry has focused primarily on information, believing that if we bomb patients with enough information about a product and/or the disease it is intended to treat, they will respond with adherence.

    This is the line of reasoning that causes the industry to mount patient compliance programs, like hypertension newsletters that patients ignore in droves, reporting that they really don't need to understand hypertension in any great depth, are irritated to be reminded on a regular basis that they are ill, and may be embarrassed if a family member encounters a document for a patient concerning a condition they did not know another family member had. In brief, swamping a patient with information will not engender adherence.

    Motivation, or rather the lack thereof, is, on the other hand, the member of the triad most likely to moderate whether or not a patient adheres with his/her program of chronic medication, since people are not prone to continue to spend time and money, both of which are required for compliance, if they do not understand the value proposition of the medication they are being told to take...


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



    Research Highlights: Oncology and Antibiotics

    Data Download provides highlights of recently released data from GfK Market Measures' Therapeutic Class Studies (TCS). Based on primary market research, TCS provide in-depth analysis of market trends, physician practice patterns and competitive brand positioning.

    This month's selections cover research from studies conducted in the areas of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and antibiotics.