(HealthNewsDigest.com) – There are over 7.5 billion people on this planet, with their own individual physical, mental and emotional ‘quirks”. This myriad of personal needs shaping the global healthcare market is further complicated by the diversity of delivery, even from location to location in the same country!
Add into this mix high-speed advancement in medical technology and science, and you have a super-charged dynamic sector.
How on earth is it possible to make sense of such a complicated, ever-shifting field? One that impacts on the quality of life for every person on the planet.
The only real answer is healthcare qualitative marketing
Healthcare – or medical – market research is certainly a key principle for companies who want to make a profit. No organisation should develop and market products or services based on assumptions. Especially when those assumptions involve the massive diversity of health needs, aims and preferences!
It’s vital to your business growth that you regularly make sure that you’re matching or not exceeding customers’ expectations.
<b>What is healthcare market research?</b>
The first thing to make clear is that market research is different from the investigations and knowledge building that healthcare R&D teams do to explore areas of medical need.
Development priorities for healthcare providers can be extremely obvious. At the time of writing, pharmaceutical companies and governments are focused on producing COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. A better understanding of dementia causing conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease – and developing preventive measures, improved diagnostics and treatments – is also hugely important.
However, some aspects of healthcare still pivot on consumer opinions and preferences. That is when healthcare market research comes into its own.
It drills down on what consumers want – as well as need – and their preferred delivery method for healthcare products and services. What price are they prepared to pay and what are their expectations on results and such issues as longevity?
In a nutshell, it can answer whether a product or service is commercially viable, but also the best ways to position and promote it.
Innovation and healthcare market research
We have already touched on how crucial this type of business intelligence is for product and service development. It can cost considerable sums to test innovations and even more to bring them to market. Regular testing and feedback from within the target audience can reveal hitherto unnoticed stumbling blocks – or even minor details – that might derail the whole project at a later stage.
Business planning and healthcare market research
R&D teams are not the only people who need in-depth data drawn from meaningful user research activities. FDs, CEOs and marketing personnel benefit from this vital business intelligence.
For example, it can highlight how potential users perceive the product. Do they view it as unique, or similar to rival products? From this point, branding managers can develop strategies to differentiate it from competing products.
Or, you can use healthcare market research to illuminate pricing strategies. Sometimes financial success comes from what the perceived worth of a product or service is, rather than its actual value and a formulaic profit margin.
Quantitative and qualitive research
What sort of things can you do to generate meaningful research data?
The answer depends on your specific target audience and the product or service you hope to develop or to sell more effectively.
However, activities in this field can be broadly split into quantitative and qualitative research.
Quantitative research is to create data maps showing numbers. So, for example, how many people explore your website properly and access your product pages, and how many users of your product would recommend it to others.
Qualitative research is often of greater value. It looks at people’s behaviours, reactions, and opinions. For instance, why are they clicking off your website so quickly, and why are they reluctant to recommend your product? It often has an observation element to it, when you watch user behaviour to get valuable insights.
Interviews and focus groups
If you need answers from your users, ask! Which is why research often focuses on one-to-one interviews (by phone, online or in-person) or small focus groups to discuss relevant topics.
Keep in mind that the people selected to take part will skew the nature of your healthcare market research findings. What would serve your commercial needs best? For example, people who currently don’t use a product like yours, people who already use a rival product or people who use your product?
Also, you need to consider the best backdrop such as getting your feedback from within healthcare settings, out in the field or even in a market research ‘lab’.
As there are so many aspects and variables to healthcare market research, it is often something best left to the professionals!