- Validation Division
- Validation Process
- Validation Study Types
- Market Understanding
- Market Segmentation
- Patient Attitudes
- Brand Equity Tracking
- Conjoint Techniques
- Brand Potential
- Communications
- Market Understanding
Market Understanding:
Brand Equity Tracking
About
Pharmaceutical companies spend a great deal of money tracking how well their brands are performing. IMS provide the monthly sales data, and primary research companies have traditional provided usage and awareness data.
Yet is usage and awareness the most interesting thing to test? In particular, how robust are our measures of awareness? Past studies, such as the EphMRA Foundation 2001 study have shown how much awareness varies according to the context of the question and the methodology chosen.
More and more pharmaceutical executives are interested in measuring the value of their brands. They want to know:
- How much doctors value their brands
- What differentiates their brands from competitor brands
- What associations and emotional roles are relevant to their market
- How to measure the impact of their activities on the value of their brands over time
- To have confidence that brand equity translated into sales.
These are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which matter to the pharmaceutical industry.
How we can deliver
BHI has developed a quantitative approach to measure the brand equity of pharmaceutical brands. It is based on the size and strength of the relationships that doctors have with pharmaceutical brands, and employs an approach which we call READS (more of which below).
Doctors develop relationships with pharmaceutical brands over time based on their experiences with those they come into contact with. These experiences will likely include the marketing support that the brand has had, the reps seen, the patients treated with it, and so on. The exact experiences that each doctor has had, with a specific brand, is going to be unique to that doctor. A key principle embraced by this approach is to treat doctors holistically in their relationship to each brand, and to measure the level of attachment in this relationship.
A version of this approach was demonstrated at the BHBIA Conference in April 2007, in a joint paper with Novartis.
READS stands for:
Relevance – First, we need to consider the range of associations and related emotions that doctors have towards pharmaceutical brands. This is measured through attribute lists and graphic descriptions of people who act as metaphors for the brand.
Experience – Experience of brands is a major source of “brand-feelings”. If a doctor becomes attached to your brand, that brand has a stronger emotional role than if he was not attached.
Attitudes – We create stories and myths to understand and rationalise the world, including brands, and through market research we can measure these “brand-feelings”. Our experience is crucial in the formation of these stories. In our analysis, we should take account of double-jeopardy – that is, major brands have more users, and more loyal users than minor brands. Attitudes help us measure brand health.
Differentiation – A unique identity gives meaning to a brand, and provides a basis for loyalty. Analysis should be based on attached/users of each brand.
Segmentation – The analysis shows what proportion of doctors are married to your brand. It also shows whether they believe it is a good marriage – and drugs vary widely on both counts. This segmentation is then matched against prescribing data. Brand equity is based on the projection and modeling of this data.