Market Research Activities Throughout a Drug’s Lifecycle
Some pharmaceutical executives have said that you can never start market research too early. As previously discussed, pharmaceutical market research is a series standard activities that the company does for each of its developing products. Certainly, the market research team is constantly refining how it accomplishes those tasks to achieve more precise results, but these activities are critical to a product’s decision support throughout its lifecycle.

Clinical development can take several years. So for every clinical development compound at Company L, there is a launch plan that includes detailed market research activities. These activities are based on the compound’s attributes and benefits that it will to the marketplace. The cost for pre-launch market research for one drug is can easily be in the millions of dollars over a three or four year period. However, the compound may require very little market research support prior to launch.

Company L begins with an outline of the market research strategy. The market research team must also help develop the product profile and its potential positioning. These tasks require clinical data to inform the process. However, until the data comes in, Company L’s market researchers focus on developing the drug’s business strategy. The strategy outlines the drug’s target patient demographics, such as the patient population and the typical patient profile, as well as the product’s features. The market research team combines this initial strategy with results from the clinical trial to develop the product positioning and messaging.

Excerpted from Chapter 3, Section 2: Communicating Findings to Internal Clients:

Establish a Centralized Database to Share Presentation Findings
Market research teams are quick to recognize the advantages technology advancements can bring in their quest to share information and data. In fact, most market research groups have developed a database system that allows them to share findings and past research projects. According to survey data, 68.2% of companies have established a system to efficiently share information with other departments. Nonetheless, this still leaves a remaining 31.8% of companies who have not been capitalizing on database opportunities.

Building an efficient database system can be a somewhat challenging task. Due to a lack of time and infrastructure, Company G did not have wherewithal to develop a sound system until this point. The company at least had an informal database in place. However, the market research team is now in the process of converting its database into a formal share point drive. The market research team expects that its new database will allow it to share questionnaires and the like with international colleagues as well as research findings with other functions.

Company G’s market research team has shied away from the communication model of producing long reports for people to read. As a Company G executive noted, “Ideally it would be good if there was some documentation, but quite frankly I don’t think anybody would read them (reports), so why bother?” The database helps bridge the gap in communication between the market research group and other functions. Though the market research team does not create long reports, it does rely on its database to serve as a new age source of documentation – where other functions can reexamine past presentations and learn about market research findings in more detail.