Market Research in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Key Strategies and Best Practices

This guide will help you understand what market research in the pharmaceutical industry is. Learn the best practices and key strategies to boost your marketing efforts.

What Is Market Research in the Pharmaceutical Industry?

Market research in pharma is a process of collecting and analyzing data about pharma market trends, companies, and stakeholders with a view to making data-driven business decisions. It can cover but isn’t limited to your competitors and their market share, patients behaviours and attitudes, customer demographics, motivations of HCPs when choosing treatments, etc.

Goals of Market Research for Pharmaceutical Companies

Usually, marketers perform one or several goals as listed below:

1. Understand your target audience better
2. Test concepts of new products with your TA
3. Create better market strategies and handpick tactics
4. Find market opportunities for expansion or new product launch
5. Improve your communication with healthcare stakeholders
6. Understand how your marketing efforts perform and make changes.
7. Study the existing laws and regulations that can impact your sales.

The Role of Pharmaceutical Industry Market Research

Pharma market research can help your company:

• Reduce business risks, especially in new markets.
• Acquire approval from regulatory bodies.
• Outperform your competitors due to valuable insights.
• Ensure data-driven decisions in marketing and sales.

Key Components of Pharma Market Research

The key components of pharma market research include:

• General Understanding of the Market

Researching the market size, its CAGR, key trends, and gaps in treatments if any. It will help you understand your income perspectives on the market and make better predictions.

• Market Demand and Patient Needs

It will help you study which treatments are popular with patients/HCPs/payers. It can also unravel why certain treatments are chosen over others as well as what patient needs they meet and what patient needs remain unmet.

• Identifying Key Players and Market Positioning

This component will help you identify the key competitors on the market and how they differentiate themselves in accordance with set criteria. One of the ways to quickly depict it, is to place competitors on a spectrum. For example: cheap-expensive spectrum, drug generations spectrum, ease of use spectrum, etc.

It will also help you to position your own treatment on spectrum and identify your main competitors from the rest of the market players.

An example of market research

• Regulatory Landscape Assessment

Since the pharma market is heavily regulated and laws differ from one country to another, you need to understand the restrictions that will be imposed on you within a given legislation. Keep in mind that in many countries, laws control not only drug composition but also how you can and can not promote treatments.

• Pricing Analysis

This type of pharma market intelligence can help you understand the prices for the competing products and how much potential customers are ready to pay.

• Target Audience Segmentation

Market segmentation helps you divide your target audience into distinct groups in order to craft specific messaging for each group.

Types of Market Research in Pharma

There are two main types of market research in the pharma industry.

Primary Research

Primary research is collecting new data from sources instead of using research that has been already conducted by somebody. When it comes to the pharma industry, primary research involves collecting information from the target group.

Target Group

The target group of the primary research consists of healthcare stakeholders, including:

• Healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, physician assistants, dietitians, optometrists, dentists, midwives, pharmacists, etc.)
• Key Opinion Leaders (HCP or researchers)
• Patients
• Patient caregivers (e.g., parents of underage children)
• People engaged in financing healthcare (insurance reps, hospital procurement).

Goals

The goals of primary research of the pharma market can include:

• Validation of a hypothesis
• Fresh data on a subject
• Filling the gaps in research
• Obtaining insights
• Researching specific cases.

Pros & Cons

Advantages of primary research include:

• You have complete control over the research (who you ask, which questions, what methodology is used, etc.)
• You get answers to specific questions that are topical to your market research.
• Results are up-to-date.
• You can get unexpected insights from the research.
• You get to talk to your target audience and hear them directly
• You get profound insights, especially if you use qualitative methods.

Disadvantages of primary research are:

• High cost
• Time-consuming
• Requires skilled professionals to plan and implement
• A small target group makes it hard to generalize the results of research
• Respondents and/or interviewers can be biased, which can skew the results

Methods of Primary Market Research in Pharma

Primary market research in the pharmaceutical industry utilizes multiple methods that can be divided into two main categories:

• Quantitative methods

Quantitative methods collect data that can be measured or counted and then statistically processed. For example, the number of times an HCP prescribes a certain drug. The particular quantitative methods include:

• Surveys - a series of questions with multiple answer options. They can be conducted either face-to-face or via methods of telecommunication (phone, email, etc.). They can help you identify the brand awareness and attitude towards it, as well as how people prescribe/use certain drugs.
• MadDiff Analysis - a type of questionnaire that asks stakeholders to prioritize attributes of a certain entity as the most favourable and the least favourable. For example, “pick the most and least important qualities of a pain medication: price, how fast it takes away pain, brand, friends' recommendations, doctor’s recommendation, etc.”
• Conjoint Analysis - a type of research method that emulates a real-life scenario where people prescribing/purchasing drugs need to make a trade-off between several features. For example, choose between several medications: drug 1 (low price, 3 side effects, manufactured in county A), drug 2 (medium price, 2 side effects, manufactured in county B), or drug 3 (low price, 2 side effects, manufactured in county C).

• Qualitative methods

Qualitative research methods in pharma marketing enable companies to unravel qualities that can be understood but not measured, such as emotions, thinking processes, behavioral patterns, etc. These methods enable pharma marketing teams to uncover hidden insights that can not be obtained in quantitative research.

• Focus Group is a moderated group discussion of diseases, treatments, and/or particular products. The main goal is to understand attitudes, emotions, behaviours, considerations, and motivations.
• IDIs or In-depth Interviews - it’s a type of qualitative market research in the pharma industry that encompasses a one-on-one meeting with the target audience. The interviews are usually based on questionnaires with open questions that try to understand emotions (e.g., about brand, disease, or treatment), behaviours (like purchasing patterns), and motivations behind certain decisions (e.g., prescriptions). IDIs are similar to focus groups in terms of questions and goals. However, they are better when you need to discuss sensitive topics with interviewees to make them feel comfortable and encourage openness. On the other hand, they are resource-intensive, as you need to conduct each interview separately.
• Observation (also known as Ethnographic Research) is the process of studying patients or HCPs behavior by observing it in its natural environment. It’s a questionable technique. Scientifically speaking, you can get accurate data only if you don’t disclose the fact of observation (since human behaviour alters when we know that somebody is looking at us). However, undisclosed observation is unethical, and you need to get consent to do it, which can skew the results.
• Concept testing is the process of testing how marketing materials or your product ideas impact your target audience.

Secondary Research

Secondary research in pharma marketing involves acquiring and analyzing the results of past market studies on the same topic that have been planned and carried out by your company or other organizations.

When to conduct secondary research:

• When you do not have enough time or budget for primary research
• When the subject is very well studied.
• When you carried out primary research on the same topic in the past.
• When you need access to large volumes of data.
• When you need to collect as much information as possible before primary research in order not to “invent the wheel.”

Pros & Cons

Advantages of secondary research include:

• Less expensive compared to the primary research - you still might need to pay to access articles and studies, but not as much as planning and carrying out the primary research.
• You can get results within days, sometimes within hours, which is much faster compared to primary research.
• You access a large body of knowledge and historic data acquired before you
• You can analyze historical data and possibly find hidden trends that you can use in forecasting
• The more data you get for statistical analysis, the more accurate results you’ll get
• Analysing data from multiple sources helps decrease bias-related risks.
• Secondary research can help you identify the gaps in general knowledge and possibly use it to plan and implement primary research.

Disadvantages of primary research are:

• You cannot control subjects others have researched before you, often, market researchers end up with a lot of questions that nobody asked before.
• Historical data can become obsolete or outdated, for example, when a new generation of drugs hits the market.
• You might need to investigate regional specifics, which would be lacking in the historical data.
• You have no control over research methods or the quality of its implementation, so you can’t guarantee the result.
• If you need specific data, sifting through tons of published papers can be tedious.
• Meta-analysis might show inconsistent results across all studies, which will leave you with more questions than answers.

Sources for Secondary Research

1. Historical company data
2. Scientific journals and magazines
3. Market intel reports
4. Competitors
5. Clinical trials and healthcare databases
6. WHO databases and documents
7. Legislation
8. Competitors

Prevalence of diabetes in Europe by country - Turkey example Source: https://diabetesatlas.org/data-by-location/region/europe/ 

Sometimes, some researchers study what patients share on social media about their experiences with disease, treatments, and related aspects. It can also be a source of valuable information.

Quick summary on types of pharmaceutical market analysis

Overall, using primary or secondary research in pharma depends on the type of data you are seeking, your timeline, budget, and other factors. In certain cases, using historical data on well-researched topics will be enough to make correct predictions. Sometimes, extrapolating results from research conducted in one culture to another culture will also be enough.

In our opinion, combining secondary and primary types of research can yield the best results in pharma marketing.

Tools for Market Research in the Pharmaceutical Industry

In your market research, you will be using several types of solutions, including:

• Survey tools to ease the distribution of questionnaires and results processing.
• Platforms for focus groups that enable you to conduct focus groups and collect and process data.
• Solutions that enable you to conduct IDIs.
• Various databases that enable you to look for specific scientific research, regulations, healthcare data, market intel reports, etc.
• Data analysis and visualisation tools that will enable you to quickly assess information and process large data sets.
• Platforms that provide access to healthcare stakeholders and enable you to plan and conduct panels with them.

Emerging Trends in Pharmaceutical Market Research

The recent trends in pharmaceutical market research include:

6 Steps to Conduct Effective Pharma Market Research

The key steps in the pharma market include:

1. Setting clear goals for the research

At this step, you need to identify the key goal of your market research. It will impact the type of data you want to acquire in your market research as well as how you will use this data. The goal will also help you identify the key methodologies of your research

For example:

We are launching a new metformin-based treatment in region 1. We want to understand many things, including:

• Diabetes statistics in the region
• Available metformin-based treatments
• Prices for these treatments
• Diabetes trend (declining vs increasing)
• Cultural artifacts that impact the early onset of diabetes (e.g., high consumption of sugary drinks and foods, sedentary lifestyle).
• Data about health factors that can trigger early onset of diabetes (e.g., family history, obesity levels, etc.).
• Percentage of people belonging to ethnicities prone to diabetes (Black African, African Caribbean, and South Asian)
• Diabetes awareness in the population and current programs to work with it.
• Current regulations on metformin-based treatments include government-based funding for such treatments.
• Our product has fewer side effects than other metformin-based treatments, are people willing to pay more for this?

2. Developing a plan for the research

At this stage, you need to identify several important aspects of your research:

• Analyse the available internal data.
• Choose the type of research (primary, secondary, or hybrid)
• Identify and segment your target audience
• Select particular methods (IDIs, interviews, statistical analysis, etc.)

Your questions will shape the chosen methodologies. For example, diabetes prevalence and its trends in the country can easily be found in open sources, as there are many organizations that gather such data. You can easily access the regulatory data on governmental websites. However, when it comes to the cultural artifacts, you previously collected them when you were launching a treatment for cardiovascular diseases just a year ago. However, when it comes to diabetes awareness and the readiness of people to pay for your particular product, you might want to conduct primary research to understand patients better.

3. Gathering the toolkit for research

This includes choosing the tools and platforms to carry out research and creating questionnaires if you decide to conduct primary research. At this stage, you might also need to hire professionals who can carry out IDIs, form focus groups, negotiate with stakeholders about interviews, and complete preparations for the next step:

4. Collecting Data

At this stage, you gather information from the chosen sources and compile all the data in one or several files. For primary research, you conduct interviews and collect answers from people who agreed to take part in your surveys. For secondary research, you sift out data from the chosen documents.

5. Processing Data & Interpretation

Raw data doesn’t help you make decisions, especially if you carried out primary research or meta-analysis of several studies on a certain subject. That’s why processing and interpretation data is critical.

Let’s say you had several surveys studying attitudes, you’ll need statistical analysis to unravel the frequency of each type of answer or establish correlations. For IDIs, apart from getting insights, you can also use lexical analysis to uncover the hidden attitudes. If you recorded interviews, you can also look at facial expressions to try and read the emotions of stakeholders. Finally, you need to interpret the data.

6. Creating a Research Report

Once you’ve processed and interpreted data you need to compile it for your decision-makers in a report. Some of the key components of the report include:

1. Executive summary
2. Key insights
3. Suggested next steps for the company.

Challenges and Considerations in Pharma Market Research

Conducting pharma market analysis has a number of challenges, including:

1. Finding respondents for research
2. Language barriers
3. Different levels of medical and pharm education of key stakeholders require a tailored approach to interviews and surveys
4. Lack of trained specialists to conduct market research
5. Possible biases of researchers
6. Frequent and abrupt shifts in the market can make old research obsolete.
7. The necessity to navigate complex regulatory restrictions in new markets.

Hire a Pharma Marketing Agency for Your Next Research

One of the best ways to tackle multiple challenges in market research is to hire a Pharma Marketing Agency. Companies like NANOBOT can offer you their experience and expertise in the pharma market research. NANOBOT can help you organize your research from goal setting to reporting. Our team excels in both primary and secondary research types in many regions of the world.

Ready to conduct pharma market research?

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