Solutions: Healthcare

MavenMagnet has developed a high degree of expertise in the healthcare space, at both the pharmaceutical and institution levels. This has been an active area for us because of the difficulty and cost of reaching target audiences through traditional research, regulatory barriers imposed on most research, and the sensitive and emotional subjects that our clients need to better understand. Respondent reluctance to openly express true attitudes, feelings and barriers is a major problem in questionnaires, groups and even one-on-one interviews. Variance in attitudes by age, geography, and income also adds to the cost and complexity. Our methodology lets healthcare companies and institutions go broad and deep to identify trends, uncover issues and opportunities, and do it in a fast, cost-effective way.  Here are some examples:

Brand Reputation Analysis

A global pharmaceutical company had a product recall in a division that did not carry the corporate name and for a product that had a very narrowly defined target audience. The assignment was to track the impact of the recall on the corporate name among

  1. Overall population
  2. HCPs
  3. Moms
  4. Regulators
  5. Investors
The report was used to guide PR messaging and assess the impact on each target to determine the level of corrective action that was required for each. There was a major discovery component with respect to impact on two target segments that was unanticipated at the outset of the assignment.

Community Development Strategy

Another global pharmaceutical company engaged us for its bariatric product to help them build a strong community of morbidly obese patients and identify how to manage them online and offline. The target audience was patients and caregivers. The objectives were:

  1. understand the social  media footprint of the patients in the context of obesity
  2. understand the relevance of support systems
  3. understand the impact of obesity on the patient's life
  4. gauge their attitudes towards solutions that were available
  5. identify motivators and barriers
  6. identify the types of patients who can become community advisors
    7.  
Insights covered areas such societal and family influence, issues on sexual performance and infertility, discomfort, and inability to get clothes.  The action based on the study guided the formation of stakeholder groups, campaign messaging, support group creation and structure, forum and blog strategy, and community development strategy.

Brand Health Relative to Competitors

A manufacturer of glucose meters needed to better understand its perceived strengths and weaknesses relative to its key competitors. The competitors that our client thought were at product parity (or inferior) were achieving significantly better brand preference, resulting in superior sales performance.  The study covered patients with diabetes and HCPs. In addition to an in-depth competitive analysis, there was a discovery component that led to a major change in advertising and PR messaging, HCP communication, and emphasis in the collateral material. Although the amount of blood required by glucose meters of all brands was exactly the same, the perception was that our client's product required more blood for accuracy. This was perceived by patients as a significant negative. The report quantified the attribute ranking on all major factors for each brand including data management, co-pay issues, pain on insertion, alternative site flexibility and even areas such as measuring that value of a competitor's  backlight feature for night use.