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Transcript:
Date: 5/01/2010
In this episode we’ll cover various topics pertaining to marketing research in the pharmaceutical industry. We have three distinguished thought leaders with us who represent different perspectives on marketing research.
First, we’ll hear from Lynnette Cooke, CEO of Kantar Health. Then, we’ll speak with Juliana Mastroserio, Senior Manager of Marketing Research at Johnson & Johnson. Finally, we’ll Debbie Kossman, Senior VP at National Analysts Worldwide, and the 2010 President of PMRG, the Pharmaceutical Marketing Research Group.
PMRG recently held their 2010 annual national conference. We’ll provide you with some takeaways our speakers brought back from the conference.
I’m Dan Limbach, your host and producer of the PharmaVOICE Webcast Network.
Dan: Here’s my conversation with Lynnette Cooke, CEO of Kantar Health.
Lynnette, are you seeing a shift in budgets away from pure market research to integrative strategies that include outcomes, formulary and pricing elements and if so, what impact is this having on the arena; and if not, do you expect this to happen?
Lynnette: I’d say the quick answer is yes, in that we’ve actually watched this slowly evolve for many years now. What we expect to see in the next 18-24 months is a big acceleration of this type of integration and we believe that this is to respond to the massive changes that are going on in our industry today.
The budgets are being deployed differently and in one way, you could think of it as a kaleidoscope, where all the pieces or the colors are the same but as you slowly make a change or move the kaleidoscope around, the outcome is very different and what I mean by that is, when you take a look at all the changing needs of pharmaceuticals in our industry, we can still support what’s going on with traditional market research and the budgets may be shifting slightly but it doesn’t mean that that type of work is going away completely.
To just summarize, what I mean by that is a lot of your rigid survey research processes and techniques, or approaches in methodologies are now being utilized in a much broader sense across the entire lifecycle, and it’s really being driven, again, by these changing – or by the transformation that we’re seeing in the industry.
If you break that down into three categories, the first one would be really the changing mindsets toward healthcare today. It starts with healthcare reform but it very much takes a look at how our clients or how the industry is becoming very customer consumer centric. Patients are becoming much more empowered in managing their healthcare, in gaining greater access to information, talking to one another and they are going to demand stronger outcomes or better results from the healthcare that they’re receiving.
On the other hand, we will see also that government is going to get more involved and expect healthier behavior from consumers; so it’s very much a two-way street that we see in the future.
We will see more and more personalized medicine, which is a shift in the mindset from 10, 15 years ago; there aren’t as many blockbusters, so there is more of what everybody is referring to as the niche busters and it’s changing that mindset from drugs and treatment to outcomes or even before the outcomes, disease prevention.
Health management affects our marketing strategies and the sales model, which brings me to the next, or the second, area where we’re seeing a tremendous amount of change in the industry is with regard to launch strategies. We will need to adapt all the activities and continue to do so as the brands become more global. We will see more and more global brand building. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have a lot of local activity going on, but there will be much more knowledge sharing and this will require greater global coordination.
So a lot of those marketing research activities that everybody has been talking about, how the budgets are shifting away from them; they’re actually still taking place, they might not necessarily be as iterative or sequential as they were in the past. They’re just now – today, we’re finding that they’re more integrated into other activities, like market access, like outcomes, like pricing and reimbursement, as opposed to being completely separate from those activities. Certainly the integration of traditional and new media will have a great impact on our launch strategies, as well as just technology in general with regard to the amount of virtual care or telemedicine that’s taking place. The wireless mobile devices will have a big impact on treatment, diagnosis and monitoring. So the way in which we plan for launch and post launch activities, in monitoring these global brands, in selling these products, will very much need to adapt a new business model, a new sales model.
The third area that I think has the greatest impact on how these budgets are shifting is increased accountability. There is many discussions around all the safety activity that’s required; there is more and more non-interventional research, also known as the observational studies, are being required and many of these really tap into the rigor of survey research that we’ve been conducting for years. So we’re going to find more and more integration of your marketing research activities, understanding the post surveillance activities and as opposed to in the past, where they may have been very separate departments and not necessarily talking to one another, there will be more knowledge sharing across those activities. That will integrate with your health economics and outcomes research, compliance programs, pricing and market access.
It truly is a combination of integrating existing strategies, as well as the bridging the old way of conducting research with some new techniques – or actually, new applications throughout the organization.
Dan: Thank you, Lynnette. What are some of the industry trends you took away from the PMRG conference?
Lynnette: Probably the top three was that healthcare reform is still a huge unknown and many people came to the conference looking to find some answers; although it was interesting because the conference took place literally hours after that bill was signed. I would say it’s not necessarily a trend, but just a key finding that people are still desperate to find out and learn more about how this is going to impact their day to day lives, whether or not you’re on the client side, on the agency side and how we should be engaging all the stakeholders.
A second trend is that the stakeholders are changing. As I talked earlier about how we need to rethink our launch strategies, we have to rethink all of the stakeholders along the entire lifecycle and figure out how we engage everybody in an integrated fashion. So a lot of discussion at the conference and post conference around patients and the consumers and then also around thought leaders. It’s no longer just the key opinion leader that people are trying to talk to or engage; it is many different influencers and it could include obviously payers and physicians but potentially more government and employers, as well as caregivers.
A third trend was around finding more creative methods and approaches for the niche busters that a lot of the traditional marketing research activities and methodologies have been built and perfected over the past couple of decades in response to supporting the blockbusters but creating positioning strategies for personalized medicine or for niche busters is necessary because you still have to promote that but it needs a very different perspective on that positioning strategy and the subsequent messaging. And then also, do you still do segmentation studies, or is there some hybrid of that that helps you with your targeting, even though it’s a much smaller target. And there is some thought processes going back to some older research and maybe doing some re-forecasting of some compounds that didn’t necessarily advance because they weren’t a blockbuster candidate but potentially could be a viable product today.
Dan: Thank you, Lynnette. And now to Juliana Mastroserio, Senior Manager of Marketing Research at Johnson & Johnson.
Julie, are you starting to ask your agencies for different types of research than you have in the past? If so, what and if not, why not?
Juliana: Yeah, Dan, we are definitely starting to ask market research agencies for different types of research; but beyond that, we’re really asking different things of our research suppliers. Let me talk about that a little bit more.
I think the main reason driving this is that the healthcare landscape has really changed radically over the past 10 years or so. So the traditional pharmaceutical marketing model, based on regent frequency of detailing to physicians that worked really well for us in the 80s and 90s, is no longer viable in today’s marketplace. And with the advent of healthcare reform on top of that, as well as a still recovering economy, there is – and will continue to be – more focus on how healthcare dollars are spent and by whom.
For example, the pharmaceutical industry’s customer base is changing and has changed with fewer and fewer physicians able to make really independent prescribing decisions. Our own research demonstrates that not only are physicians running into lack of insurance coverage for branded products; they are so frustrated by prior authorizations and step edits and they’re really thinking about unemployment as a critical decision factor in how they prescribe today. So they’re very much unwilling to burden their patients with higher co-pay costs.
In any case, the relative influence of different players in the market is changing. With payers, such as employers and now more than ever government payers gaining more and more influence.
The rules of the game have really changed, and I don’t that any of us really knows how and to what extend those rules are going to change in the future.
You’re probably wondering how does all this affect the type of research we’re asking for. First of all, we want to work with suppliers who are informed about how the actual healthcare landscape is changing. So they need to think more broadly about the types of customers that we need information for in order to market our drugs and products more successfully. They need to think beyond kind of the traditional things they’ve done in the past for us, like forecast models we relied on physicians, we relied on managed care directors, pharmacy directors to help give us some substance and feedback into our forecast models.
I think the forecast models and other traditional methods of gathering information are going to need to expand to include these different and new customers.
Does that make sense?
Dan: Yes, Julie, it certainly does. Tell me more.
Juliana: Okay. So the second point I want to make, Dan, is that – and this is certainly nothing new to anyone who works in this industry – market research budgets have really been slashed. What that means is that not only do we have fewer dollars to spend on market research, we also have fewer headcount to work with as well. Like everyone else, we have more to do with less, essentially.
We don’t have the luxury of running huge studies that takes months and months to complete, which was kind of the former market research model, and we don’t have time to read and summarize 200 page reports that come across our desks. So we really need our suppliers to help us think differently and act differently too.
The third point I want to make – and I really don’t mean this to be a criticism of the market research industry or our suppliers – it’s more of a heads up for them. We, and particularly our management – we’re just tired of doing the same old studies over and over again that produce some really great data but don’t drive great insights.
For example, one of the best experiences I ever had with a supplier was working on a relatively simple ATU study. And trust me, ATU studies are not really exciting projects to work on. But this actually became fun and exciting to work on because we decided as a team (the supplier and our research team) decided that we would get together to work on developing insights before the final report was finished. And so we ended up with a real win-win-win situation for everybody. It not only saved us time in the long run, we came up with some key recommendations that were actually implemented by management.
I think your audience will understand what I mean by that because sometimes in market research we feel like we do studies but they don’t create action or they don’t create results that management is able to action against.
I think last, it really cemented the relationship between the supplier I was working with and my team. Again, it really was that kind of win-win-win situation all around.
Dan: We love those. Anything else?
Juliana: We’re also looking to find suppliers who can help us find really new and innovative ways to gather information, whether it’s through new technology platforms, like social media, or even new methodologies.
Last, but not least, we want to work with suppliers who can help us literally bring the voice of the customer to life. What I mean by that is we need more concise, more impactful presentations, and we need to leverage some of the existing technologies that are already out there, like audio and video clips.
Dan: Excellent, that was very informative. Julie, what are some of the takeaways you brought back from the PMRG conference?
Juliana: What I think was really interesting was that the PMRG conference started a day and a half after the Senate voted on the healthcare reform bill. The interesting part of that was that the PMRG was all about ways of change and the fact that this momentous change had just taken place before this meeting, really made it feel even more immediate and something that we needed to tackle.
Dan: That’s great, Julie. Thank you.
And now Debbie Kossman, Senior VP at National Analysts Worldwide and the 2010 President of PMRG.
Debbie, how has the web changed data collection methods?
Debbie: The web gives us unprecedented ability to tailor questions to individual responses. So if one respondent answers one way, we can go off in one direction. We can shift gears entirely for someone else.
It’s given us quality control because we can immediately resolve illogical or contradicting answers and in particular, it facilitates in the moment of real-time questions about what people are thinking, or feeling, or doing right at the moment we poll them.
Dan: Very good. What are the pros and cons of web-based market research techniques compared with traditional means?
Debbie: You know, the thing we always worry about most, regardless of what the method is by which we’re contacting people is are the people we’re reaching with our method, the people we want to understand – in other words, have we reached a representative group of people and that is as much a problem as it was with traditional sources. It’s just more obvious. And so we’re always asking ourselves who am I going to get if I use an iPhone to make contact with people; who will I get if I’m going to use a Blackberry? Are those really the people I need to understand? That would have been just as true with mail techniques; it’s that we know there is a natural ebb and flow, a familiarity with technology, so that when a new technology is introduced to ask questions by the web, that means we’re getting early adopters.
As the technology disseminates, we can have more confidence that we’ve got a broad sweep of a population and then we move onto the next technology and the concerns start again.
Dan: What are the challenges involved in understanding or qualifying the data collected through new and emerging media?
Debbie: We always need to be reflecting constantly about whether the particular interviewing technology is getting us to who we want, and we need to be creative and flexible about what methods we’re going to use. If we need to talk to a broad sample of the US population, we’re going to need to use more than a single technology. So when we’re interested in macro trends, we need to be able to turn to whatever tool lets us do that.
On the other hand, the nice thing about web technologies is they make it easier for us to go market to the very people we polled using that particular media. So as micro marketing has become a ubiquitous feature of how companies do business, there has been a nice match between the ability to target survey respondents and then the ability to promote to those very same people.
Dan: How is all of this impacting the relationship between market research companies and sponsors?
Debbie: I don’t see obvious differences in how the changing technologies or venues through which we conduct market research are really changing our relationships with sponsors, but it does mean that more than ever, sponsors need to be sure that when they ask for marketing research help from a research partner, that that partner has the flexibility to use a lot of different media, a lot of different ways to contacting respondents in order to match the clients ingoing question.
It used to be that we had phone survey market researchers and they always used phone as the way to contact people. You wouldn’t want to make that mistake now because you don’t want to be committed to a particular technology; you want to have the flexibility to pick and choose depending on the research problem and the marketing problem.
Dan: Are you seeing a shift in budgets going away from peer market research to integrated strategies that include outcomes, formulary and pricing elements?
Debbie: Even 25 years ago when I first started doing this, it was not unusual to be asked to include what I would call implementation questions, or tactical questions, to ask about pricing, sensitivity or optimization. I work in the pharmaceutical industry and so, of course, as the marketplace began to be constrained by formulary decision makers, for example, then speaking with those decision makers and asking about what formulary constraints might be imposed began to be incorporated as a routine kind of question.
The market pressures in healthcare today are, of course, now demanding that manufacturers of healthcare products demonstrate cost effectiveness of the products and increasingly demonstrate improved clinical outcomes that justify the cost of using those therapies.
So certainly it’s the case that those questions are incorporated more and more into research projects but I think they’ve always been a natural extension of what somebody might call pure market research and now, everyone quite self consciously attempts to include them prospectively. So they’re there if and when we need them.
Dan: What are some of the key takeaways that you experienced at the PMRG Conference?
Debbie: Members of PMRG are very concerned about government regulation and what it means in terms of reporting requirements for honoraria payments to physicians or other healthcare professionals. They’re very concerned about whether the things they ask of whomever they’re talking to are going to, in some way, be seen as attempting to exert undue influence as opposed to merely solicit information. That’s on everyone’s minds.
The constraints in terms of healthcare funding in the future is something that PMRG members are concerned about as well and not just as businesspeople but as people who will be buying and paying for healthcare going forward, and I think especially with the timing of the PMRG meeting, visa vie, the passage of the healthcare reform bill which occurred on the evening of the first day of our conference, those issues were on everyone’s minds.
Dan: Thank you, Debbie.
And that does it for this episode. For more information about PMRG, visit www.PMRG.org. And don’t forget to check out our other podcasts at www.PharmaVOICE.com/podcasts.
Until next time, I’m Dan Limbach.
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