Our ethnographic market research services uncover fresh and contextually-rich insights on how physicians and patients interact and make decisions about treatment.
We believe that our physician-patient dialogue research methodology has several advantages over those of Verilogue and ZoomRx.
Patients are recruited on the cusp of a potential therapy change—initiation barriers and drivers, as well as brand decision-making, are much more likely captured with this patient type.
The ethnographer also interviews patients right after their doctor visit—assesses what they recalled, how they felt about the visit, etc.
Companies conduct a myriad of qualitative and quantitative studies on their customers, but these studies often do not convey an intimate and holistic sense of the customers’ “lived experiences.”
“Day in the life” patient ethnography differentiates itself from common market research methodologies by excelling in discovering and explaining the meaning in patients’ lives.
Day in the life patient ethnographies, for example, provide a firm sense of the rhythm and flow of customer’s everyday lives, while also digging deep to identify how patients’ diseases, and their approach to managing it, affects their daily lives.
Gaps often exist between marketing and sales teams that have a negative impact on business.
Marketing teams work tirelessly to identify the optimal product positioning and messaging for healthcare providers (HCP).
All this, however, hinges on how effectively sales representatives execute the intended messages and marketing materials in the field.
We conduct medical device user research at several different point in the product’s lifecycle.
Early in the lifecycle, we will conduct competitive benchmark medical device testing in which users comparatively operate and assess a few different device prototypes.
This type of medical device research culminates in the crowning of a winning device, often followed by subsequent round(s) of medical device research to assess intended improvements in usability shortcomings.
A product’s promotional story should be primarily shaped by its customers—composed of what they perceive as its most important, differentiating, and compelling attributes and benefits.
Message testing studies that culminate in story construction exercises elicit the structure and content of this optimal promotional story.
An initial step on these studies is consultative—we work closely with client teams to develop a set a compelling and comprehensive set of messages for subsequent testing.
Operational pain point identification studies begin by mapping out the workflow of the key stakeholders in the business process of interest.
Identifying what specifically happens, and in what sequence, for each operational or workflow phase and step can be exacting work, particularly in complex areas.
For this reason, our approach involves a few study phase
These HCP treatment decision-making studies, sometimes called “buying process studies,” provide client teams with a foundational understanding of the key and various factors that influence HCP product selection for multiple lines of therapy.
Specific opportunities for the client’s product are revealed within the map of HCPs’ treatment decisions that we develop and refine.
Our approach to these studies involves two study phases—both composed of 1-on-1 qualitative interviews with the relevant healthcare provider.
Understanding the full and evolving arc of the patient’s disease experience provides a brand team with a core foundation of insights from which to develop meaningful marketing materials and resources that help patients’ with their needs.
Our patient journey studies involve a careful mapping of the patients’ experiences through multiple disease phases, including pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, treatment choice, treatment initiation / onboarding, and through a few lines of therapy.
Analytics data have made it easier and faster to identify marketplace trends, but understanding the specific factors driving these patterns often remains challenging.
For instance, when a company’s product is losing market share to a specific competitor among a specific customer subset, there is a need to supplement analytics with a qualitative inquiry to achieve a detailed understanding of why this occurring.
Through 3rd-party agreements, prescriber-level IQVIA data allows us to recruit the specific physicians that exhibit the prescribing trends of interest.
These studies can be one-time “spot” studies or they can be recurring “tracking studies.”
Ethnography originated in anthropology and remains its core methodology. As PhDs in anthropology, we are experts in ethnography and other qualitative methods.
We are a small firm, and as our clients often comment, our project budgets come in substantially less than the larger firms with which we compete.
Clients get the same high-level researchers throughout all study phases. Our researchers conduct the fieldwork, are intimately familiar with the study data, and write and present the reports. Our researchers even stay closely involved recruiting (clients notice how we excel at challenging recruits).
Our methodological expertise and social and psychological theoretical training enable us to identify patterns that other researchers would routinely miss.
Combined with our extensive corporate experience, this distinction in insights leads to our identification of innovative – but practical – solutions for our clients’ business needs.