Pharma research is a research field which needs specialized expertise. Pharma research covers 3 primary target groups – Doctors, Chemists and Patients across Rx and OTC categories. Apart from these groups, admin staff in hospitals, technicians and other medical staff might also be covered if it is specifically required for the project needs.

Researching Doctors

Across drug categories, the key target group of pharma research is Doctor community.

Researching doctor community is a specialized research which is different from other consumer research in many significant ways. Key aspects which differentiate doctors from other respondents are many.

Doctors are responding as experts and hence most often, each response is somewhere between an opinion and universal fact. This is different from consumer research where each response is representative of respondent’s opinion only. This limits variance and sampling error in data captured – outliers are mostly due to non sampling error. And this in turn impacts the way sample sizes are looked upon. This also turns upside down some other rules of consumer research like not using groups for any quantification estimation. Again, doctors are a very limited universe. Added to this is the constraint that they usually have very busy schedule. Limited time that they can give, therefore, needs to be used very judiciously. This impacts tools and techniques of research which can be used when researching this segment. Usual projective techniques and pictorial stimulus needs to be used minimally and very judiciously. All research with doctors needs to be conducted with ethical codes which operate in the category.

There are many such fine nuances which need to be kept in perspective when handling doctors are a research segment. Team at AZR has handled many projects in pharma research and is trained to collect and analyze pharma research data.

Chemist research

There are many aspects of pharma research which necessitate chemist research. These could be aspects like:
        Stock availability & depth of brands
        POP communication of brands
       Trade relations that companies have with trade and trade satisfaction

 

We use methadologies like quantitative research with structured interviews, exit interviews, mystery shopping excercise, stock and promo audits with chemists to address information needs listed above.


Patient research

Patient research can be done across OTC and RX categories, while its role is quite limited in RX categories. Feedback to indications and how it affects their quality of life and Patient flow can be covered for all categories. However, in OTC categories, the entire brand spectrum can be covered as well – like brand communication, brand health, equity.

At AZR we offer all dimensions of pharma research – covering the entire spectrum of target segments within its ambit.

Contact us for Pharma research of any kind.– contact@azresearch.in

 

Key target audiences that we focus on are given below. Please click on the specific segment to see our approach towards the segment.