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GfK Healthcare | October 2010 | |
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On the Other Hand…  In last month’s Vanderveer’s Views, I noted the closing of TVG and the announcement by the CEO of its parent company that there was not enough pharmaceutical marketing research work available to support that business entity. I then questioned whether, if marketplace trends continue and available work decreases, budgets swing wildly from quarter to quarter and “procurement” departments keep pressing for lower prices, it was possible to maintain a viable, forward looking health care marketing research agency in the future. Never, I argued, have health care companies needed information more. Marketing research agencies will, indeed, need to change the nature of the information they provide to be more responsive to client needs, and clients will need to be ready to pay for quality work. Feedback from a few readers suggested that I had painted a grim picture of the future of our profession. Rather, what I intended to do was suggest that if health care marketing research continued on its present course toward “commoditization” much was to be lost on both sides of the table. Given that backdrop, in this issue I would like to focus specifically, albeit briefly, on new directions that health care marketing research can pursue to enjoy new opportunities. As a self/organization-serving plug, let me note in passing that I will elaborate on these thoughts in my presentation at PMRG’s Fall Conference in Boston in late October. First, at a very practical level, our clients have increasingly come to our company to conduct marketing research to evaluate, and help to minimize, the “risk” of the FDA challenging their promotional campaigns. Demonstrating, a priori, that their promotional programs are within guidelines and are well-understood by all stakeholders can help them to avoid significant trouble and lost sales at a later date. Look for increasing amounts of compliance/regulatory research to be coming down the pike in years to come. I have already commented in previous articles, but need to at least mention here, the increased need for the conduct of skilled ethnographic research to guide the development of the new health care. Directly watching patients interact with the health care system can provide important cues to “designers,” who will be charged with eliminating the problems and enhancing the “experience” with the new health care system. A concrete example of this is the $1 billion venture fund founded by money man Wilbur Ross, a major purpose of which is to move elder care from expensive institutions, such as hospitals, into the home. Trust me when I tell you that substantial opportunities exist in vetting and in directing various aspects of this major transition. Similarly, the graying of America, as well as the adoption of American-like eating and other habits by developing countries in Asia and elsewhere, will engender substantial need for additional health care capacity. Diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and other conditions will all follow our other cultural “gifts” to developing nations, providing us with the opportunity and need for a genuinely global health care marketing and research perspective. Already, health care reform in the United States is causing consideration of what will turn out to be a significant doctor shortage as tens of millions of people gain insurance coverage and access to the medical system. Routine treatments are increasingly being pushed down from physicians to pharmacists (gotten your flu shot at CVS lately? Millions of people have!), nurse practitioners (same comment!), physician assistants and eventually to the patients themselves. Again, significant amounts of research will be needed to rearrange who does what to and for whom. As more former prescription-only products become available OTC, significant marketing research opportunities will once again be generated to assist in the process of the patient becoming his/her own health care concierge. Personalized medicine, biosimilars and other areas in which the practice of medicine is becoming more complicated will also engender significant opportunities for research, including knowledge, attitudes and practices studies and utilizability studies, as practitioners make their way through the growing morass of information and challenges. The shifts in perspectives over time in one important treatment area, oncology, are exemplary here. In the 1980s, the parlance, and thus the marketing research, centered around the treatment of “cancer.” Chemotherapy was the intervention available, with varying agents being applied to varying tumors in what was basically a shotgun approach. As we moved into the 90s, physicians became increasingly sophisticated, and focused on various kinds of cancer, lung cancer, for example, developing protocols to deal with each. The end of the 20th century saw even greater specificity and sophistication. Oncologists began to become even more focused, talking in terms of the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. More recently, even finer distinctions are being made, with physicians differentiating their therapies not only for non-squamous and squamous non-small cell lung cancer, but for EGFR-mutated versus EGFR-wild type non-small cell lung cancer. More generally, as medicine becomes more specific or personalized, it becomes more complicated for practitioners to sort through. Marketing research, focused not on product features and benefits but on treatment areas, will be required to help everyone keep up with these trends. The emergence of new communications tools, e.g., social marketing, will also provide many opportunities for research. Are physicians using such tools? Do they enhance the delivery of medical care? How are physicians (by segment) using them? Do they return a significantly positive ROI to their sponsors? These are all questions for which we should increasingly gear up to provide information. As a final note on this point, the movement toward the new media is occurring at an extremely rapid pace. While it took 89 years for the telephone to reach the critical mass of 150 million users, Facebook took only five years! Thus, researchers will need to respond promptly with actionable information about these media if we are to keep up with the changing environment. In summary, these trends have significant implications for marketing research agencies. First, client demand seems to indicate an increasing need for the separation of two tiers of marketing research. In one type of work, efficiency will be the watchword. Things that simply need to be counted will be counted as cost effectively as possible. Increasing amounts of work, however, will flow in the direction of research-based consultancy, where conclusions, recommendations, actionability and implementation will all be more important than the data. Current trends also lead to the realization that health care stakeholders other than physicians will be key. Advanced professionals, consumers, payors and other constituencies will all have to be understood and their needs met. Relatedly, health care futurists are observing that since we can no longer afford the rising cost of sickness, an increase in focus will need to be placed on consumer wellness and the products and services that meet this need. Certainly, extensive amounts of specialized marketing research will be required here. Lastly, the revolution in media provides a myriad of research opportunities. In mid-October, I will be sharing my thoughts for the future with the Association of Medical Media, which has repositioned itself from the old Association of Medical Publishers. In an era in which The New York Times is going broke, and reportedly soon will only be published in electronic format, we must undergo a similar repositioning. As GlaxoSmithKline’s Andrew Witty has so simply and correctly observed, “White pills in western markets are out.” Opportunities, he explains, have not disappeared, they have simply realigned, and those of us in health care marketing research can gain a tremendous advantage by realigning with them sooner than the competition.  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. Strategic Advisor, GfK Healthcare   |