A Pre-Launch Marketing Research Primer for Healthcare Products and Services

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 26, 2007 --
Jack M. Shapiro, Principal Consultant for J.M. Shapiro Healthcare Marketing Research and Consulting, provides a succinct series of pre-launch market research steps for healthcare products and services.

One needs to begin with the market research data that’s available. Have you thoroughly scoured all pertinent secondary market research data (also known as retrospective data) relevant to your new market entry? This would include market audits, industry and government sources, articles in the lay, business and industry press. How large is the market (dollars, units, patients, prescriptions, patient visits, etc); what are the trends; who are the big players likely to be your competitors? Who are the heavy users of products in this category? What types of data are not obtainable from secondary sources that will require a comprehensive pre-launch survey research program?

A core pre-launch survey (prospective) research program for a new product or service would begin with preliminary focus groups to ascertain attitudes about the existing market and the need for new products; obstacles to market entrance; sources of awareness of new products.

Once you’ve achieved this general market overview, you can target specific areas of inquiry for more detailed one-on-one in-depth interviews to elicit even great levels of information. You might use this occasion to test preliminary product positioning concepts.

You now need to quantify market segments and understand the competition within those segments. This will require a large-scale quantitative market segmentation and competitive positioning study to continue to understand and validate the need for your new entrant and the strengths and weaknesses of products/services you’ll be competing against. How do today’s competitors stack up against each other? Where are the remaining market needs and how can you fill them?

Hopefully the new product or service will reach the stage where qualitative or quantitative concept testing can occur. This consists of testing one or more simple descriptions of YOUR product or service based on all the clinical and market research findings you’ve acquired to-date. Which description best depicts the type of product physicians or other users still need and why? Which products/services will it replace or be additionally used? Where does your product/service fit in the market?

Your next step is to develop that concept into a promotional prototype with graphics and headlines, sub-heads, taglines and test it. This could be an all-purpose prototype to be later converted into launch advertising, direct mail pieces, sales/detailing literature or the basis for any type of print or TV promotion.

future of healthcare     healthcare market research     Jack M. Shapiro     Jack Shapiro     pre-launch research