The "effect" of medicine

A recipe for a successful product relaunch.

THE CHALLENGEA pharmaceutics company is planning to re-launch a drug. What is the existing drug's market position from the perspective of the doctors who prescribe it? What medical and emotional motivators and barriers exist in regard to the existing product within the range of drugs?Current position and possible lines of developmentThe company reqires a detailed strength / weakness analysis of the existing product compared to the competition. Especially those hard to measure intuitive attitudes and emotional assessments should be surveyed and shown. In this way, the marketing department wishes to find positioning gaps and options for designing the re-launch.

THE SOLUTION

The company's market research department defines a selected group of specialists for interview by nextpractice using the laptop-aided analysis tool nextexpertizer.
The section consists equally of doctors who regularly prescribe the drug and those who do not.

Next-generation medicines
Apart from the re-launched drug and the client, the interviewed is required to also evaluate seven rival products and three rival manufacturers plus assessment elements such as "medicine I would take myself" or "medicine my patient expects". Via the ?next generation medicine? comparison element, the survey should provide insights into innovation potential.

Naming the critical factors for success
The survey technique allows participants to freely describe and select the assessment criteria to provide the basis for a detailed strength / weakness profile.

The market positions of the assessed drugs are depicted by the dimensions in the assessment space. Proximity and distance decide over similarity or difference in the drugs' assessment. The sum of the subjective concepts named by the interviewed, reflects their success-critical rational and irrational decision-making factors.

THE RESULTS

The client receives detailed information of how the interviewed rank his product. Their freely developed descriptive profile sheds light on arising topics - such as side effects and pricing, but also trustworthiness, dynamics and esprit as well as sales staff presentation and patient information. Through the expressive results, the client can see how his product performs and can analyse the reasons in relation to other products. The assessment not only provides information about the perception of comparative products, but also about the competitor himself.

The myth of rational action
The surprising result: only about 60 percent of all free descriptions are purely factual and of a medical nature. The remaining statements have a strong emotional character. Next to rational descriptions such as "reliable, experienced, fast-acting, few side effects", emotional definitions such as "lively, implausible, power" dominate. or even professionally unrelated associations such as "party dress, has a dot over the i", "more form than substance" or "slow waltz".

A high level of emotional loading endows market share
The investigation showed that medicines with a high level of emotional loading also gained larger market shares. The resulting ranking order gained from the subjective perceptions of the interviewed doctors proved almost identical to the actual sales figures of each of the individual medicines. Finding: emotional "soft" factors play a far greater role than previously assumed, not only in the purchase of OTC medicines, but also in the choice of prescription drugs.