By Joern Kleebach, Director

In times when global health care spending is skyrocketing and cost containment measures are being implemented by public and private payers alike, the pharmaceutical industry faces a paradox. On one hand, decreased profits result in headcount and budget cuts across all functions, including business intelligence; on the other hand, utilizing market insights and understanding all stakeholders needs become key for a product and, ultimately, pharmaceutical company’s success.

In such an evolving environment, marketing research plays an increasing strategic role. The internal marketing researchers have long moved from pure information providers to strategic partners of the marketing teams. Because many of them have a wider therapeutic knowledge than product managers who are often focused on one specific brand within a franchise, marketing researchers are often instrumental when devising franchise strategies and bridging knowledge gaps between brands and research programs. 

To fulfill this important role, corporate business intelligence teams are looking for marketing research partners that can not only provide methodological and indication expertise when designing, conducting and analyzing marketing research programs, but also think strategically and help company researchers present and implement the insights gained in a way that makes a difference to the business.

By Rudiger Papsch, Managing Director, Asia, and Dulyalarp Nanthawatsiri, Research Director

Forecasting is a complex and rather technical matter. To make things even worse, it can cause substantial financial damage to companies if they get their forecasts wrong. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of pharmaceutical companies that over- or underestimated the market potential of their drugs, which resulted in misallocation of resources or lost opportunities for them. This poses not only a significant challenge to a company, but also to the career of the person preparing the forecasts, as it is fairly easy to evaluate the accuracy of a forecast post hoc.

That is probably why one finds only two groups of people: Those who are experts in forecasting and those who prefer to stay away from it. Rarely one finds people in the middle, that is, who see the need and value of good forecasting, but who at the same time have a pragmatic approach to it and do not wish (or simply do not have the time) to become experts in it.

This view is confirmed by a recent survey that GfK HealthCare conducted with 31 clients from the pharmaceutical industry.

Data Download provides highlights of recently released data from GfK HealthCare. This month's selection covers research conducted in the area of diabetes.

Click here to read the issue, which includes:

- KOL Mapping: Identifying Opinions That Count 
- Medical Consumer Devices as Product Drivers in Prescription Drug Marketing
- Research Highlight: Diabetes

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