GfK HealthCare April 2011
	Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Business: The Meaning and Benefit of Emotions By Rudolf Forsthofer, Ph.D., Research Manager Emotion is one of the most frequent buzzwords in marketing literature. Market research has shown tremendous evidence that emotions continually affect brand differentiation and long-term brand commitment. What has been scientifically proven for the consumer market is also true for pharmaceutical business. Successful health care companies have strong brand management and they know the crucial role of emotions in their marketing activities. Traditionally, the marketing activities of pharma companies are strongly based on science and rationality. There is no reason this should not remain the case – who doubts that information about product features, quality, safety, regimen and so on is indispensible? But what market research has unveiled in numerous studies is that branding – especially emotional branding – should no longer be neglected in pharmaceutical marketing. Emotional branding can enhance the uptake of your products or services and differentiate them from competitors in the marketplace, and if your brand is charged with positive emotions, brand loyalty increases. A strong emotional tie to a prescription drug, for instance, can prolong its commercial life span if the patent phase ends, or can ease the transition of a drug into the OTC world. But emotions are not only of strategic relevance, they also strongly affect the decision-making process directly. When choosing what to buy, consumers do not rely on intellect alone. This is also true when doctors decide what medication they will prescribe or when dentists choose a certain filler brand. A broad range of recent research demonstrates that emotions play a crucial role when decisions are made, and that cold arguments are often given as mere post-hoc rationalizations. Here is not the place to discuss how emotional branding works, or what strategies, techniques or activities can be implemented to create a brand connected with strong positive emotions. For more information on this topic, see the literature references at the end of this article or read a related Pipeline article entitled, “Tapping Nonrational Drivers in Health Care Marketing Research. It is enormously relevant to have a strong, emotional “Brand Beat” – or a holistic perspective of a brand’s health – and to have a clear picture what this Brand Beat exactly is. Thus, it is also of high importance to validly measure emotions. Being updated on consumers’ emotional responses toward your brand or products enables you to manage brand touchpoints and positioning in a conscious, strategic manner. Measuring emotions with the GfK EMO Sensor The GfK EMO Sensor consists of a set of validated photos, each labeled with the name of the emotion the picture has proven to illustrate. Pictures allow the consumer to respond in an intuitive manner. The use of the pictures enables different advantages: Pictures allow access to feelings that are difficult to verbalize. Pictures facilitate disclosure in people who are reluctant to talk about their feelings. Answers are less influenced by social desirability, resulting in more honest responses even for negative emotions. The pictures are strengthened in precision and unambiguousness by being labeled with the name of the depicted emotion. This combination of pictures and labels resulted in the highest validity based on a large study in 2008 by GfK and Saarland University. Benefits from strong emotional ties to your brand/product The following figures show some quite important – and to us even exciting – results of our research on brand and product emotions. One interesting result was that a distinction between positive and negative emotions, as well as different degrees of emotional intensity, allows us to explain differences not only in brand awareness but also in brand persuasion. Figure 1: Positive emotions drive brand awareness As Figure 1 shows, evidence is clear that positive emotions drive brand awareness (unaided). The more positive emotions respondents connect with a brand, the higher is the unaided awareness of the brand. The same is true for the relevant set of respondents. Depending on the number of positive emotions the respondents report, Figure 2 shows the percentage of respondents who prefer a certain brand as their first choice. Figure 2: Positive emotions drive first choice of the brand Our research on the impact of emotions felt with a brand has also shown that emotions highly correlate with the GfK Brand Beat value and, by this, that emotions even are a lever for purchase intention. Figure 3: Positive emotions drive the Brand Equity of the brand Figure 3 demonstrates that respondents who feel positive emotions like "optimism" or "interest" when thinking about Pharmaceutical Company X also show a high Brand Equity value, whereas this value is low in respondents who do not feel these emotions or even have negative feelings about Pharmaceutical Company X. As already mentioned, emotions also have an impact on purchase intention of Product X (a dental filler) as shown in Figure 4: Figure 4: Positive emotions are strong drivers for purchase intention Conclusions As pointed out in this article, emotions are of eminent importance for the success of companies and their products in competing markets. In the area of fast-moving consumer goods this has been well known for decades. Scientific work on the role of emotions in the pharmaceutical business has revealed in recent years that emotions are of really high importance for the success of pharmaceutical companies too, even though they act in a market defined by strict legislation and regulation. Despite this, empirical findings show that building up a strong brand and thus reaching a high brand equity is indispensible for success in the marketplace, and that no brand is successful without eliciting positive emotions in customers or clients. One can stress it with Biradar et al (2006): "Emotional branding focuses on how [the] brand essence should be communicated. Emotions sell." References: Biradar, S. S., Bhagavati, S. T., Shegunshi, B. & Hunshyal, R. D. (2006). Emotional Branding in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The Internet Journal of Pharmacology, 4 (2). 03/30/2011 Blackett, T. & Harrison, T. (2001). Brand medicine: Use and future potential of branding in pharmaceutical markets. Journal of Medical Marketing, 2 (1) pp. 33-49. Keller, K. L. (2008). Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity (3rd Edition). Upper Saddle River, N.J. Want to learn more on this topic? Please contact:

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