It is with great pleasure that I draw your attention to GfK’s new corporate strategy. The letter from our Management Board outlines GfK’s new approach, focusing our considerable resources on cutting- edge innovation, global consistency and future-oriented insight generation. As one of GfK SE’s most important and core businesses, GfK HealthCare will reap the rewards of being a leading player in our Consumer Experiences sector, ensuring we leverage for your benefit the very best talent and creativity from the sector’s collective 6,300-plus team members worldwide.

Our HealthCare-specific initiatives of the last 12 months continue unabated, and together with our global team of specialist researchers, I look forward to introducing you to our exciting new GfK HealthCare business.

By By Donna Kelly, Chief Consulting Officer and Stephanie Ludwig, Division Manager

“We need to figure out why physicians are choosing Drug X over Drug Y and we don’t think it’s just cost.”

“What really motivates patients to seek out information about this disease?”

“Do we really understand why our drug is not performing as well as our competitor’s? We have great data for our drug!”

“Our drug message needs an emotional hook.”

We’ve all participated in discussions where the above goals are part of the research plan. We have all also participated in research where such questions have been posed directly to respondents. Upon conclusion of such research, the researcher and team are left with the feeling that we really didn’t get to the bottom of the issue. Sometimes this is because there is more, but the respondent may not be fully aware of the influence of specific drivers.

In almost all research programs, even those where there is a strong scientific story, to get the full picture of the market influences we must examine the topic more deeply. To get at the “whys,” qualitative research will be needed.
 

By Camm Epstein, Ph.D., Vice President, Market Access

Market research requires that we ask the right people the right questions. Managed care organization research requires that we ask the right people at the right organizations the right questions. The focus of this paper will be on sampling the right organizations.

The Universe

Unlike patient and physician research, market access in the U.S. is determined by a relatively small group (about 470) of payers that vary in size and in aggregate cover more than 200 million lives. The graphic below illustrates the number of MCOs in the U.S., and the size of each bubble represents the number of lives each covers.

As a destination employer for the industry, GfK HealthCare draws 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 health care industry.

We invite you to join GfK HealthCare Aug. 3 through 6 in Las Vegas at the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) annual meeting and exhibition.

In keeping with the conference theme, Advancing Minds That Care, GfK HealthCare’s Roper Global Diabetes Group will give the following presentation to provide insights into the diabetes patient population.

Click here to read the issue, which includes:

- The Co-evolution of Cancer Therapy and Market Research
- Getting the Price Right (Part I): Willingness-to-Pay Research Using Direct Price Questioning Techniques
- Research Highlights: Oncology and Diabetes
- Get up-to-speed! The New Realities of Building Customer Loyalty Webcast

                                                                                
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