Planning Ahead for Commercial Launch

The Pressure for Pharma companies to produce a successful commercial launch—the first time around—has reached new levels thanks to fewer blockbusters, pricing pressures and a heightened regulatory environment.

Marketing researchers now have a unique opportunity to extend their value and relevance to the corner office by assisting marketers to prepare for a commercial launch.

Marketing research can play a big role in determining a product’s path to launch if researchers demonstrate a well thought-out plan that systematically answers crucial questions along the way.

Launch decision-making most often relies on three critical assessment phases:

1.  Opportunity Assessment

2. Market Assessment

3. Product Value Assessment

Marketers (and researchers) can effectively minimize risk at the time of product launch by systematically applying these three phases.

Opportunity Assessment: Armed with complete knowledge of their product (often easier said than done!), marketers must prepare to face the truth about how their product “stacks up” against the competition. An honest review of the “unmet needs” in this marketplace will allow the brand team to understand the challenges that lie ahead.

Increasingly, marketers are faced with launching products with little or no differentiation. While this calls the marketers’ skills to the forefront, it is also fraught with risk if the team does not realize the product’s appeal and its challenges clearly and early, enough. Often marketers get caught up with one aspect of the product profile and it can be difficult to point out that the “emperor is wearing no clothes”!

This phase requires rigorous research of the product profile, across target physicians, patients and payers to bring the various perspectives to the table. Questions that surface at this point might include:

• What are the “unmet needs” in this category from a patient and a physician perspective?
• Does the product have appeal for a brand range of patients or a niche group of patient?
• Who is most likely to prescribe the product and for what types of patients?

Market Assessment: Simultaneously, with marketing effort to assess the value of a launch internally (such as, fit with portfolio, expected patent life, cost of production, gross to net assumptions, etc), researchers must also prepare to help assess the kinds of investment decisions required at launch (launch timing, sales force sizing, formulary positioning strategies, etc.). the process of identifying and quantifying the market potential typically begins a year prior to the launch and includes some of the basics, such as market sizing and developing forecasts.

Product Value Assessment: Research typically qualifies and quantifies the“value” of the product through several different lenses prior to launch. Brand positioning research answers several basic questions such as

• How is the product perceived in the current market environment and perceived compared with competitors?
• What is the relative value of the product’s features/attributes versus the competition or current standard of care?
• How does/will such perception of value impact prescribing behaviors?

Positioning research offers insights into how customers perceive the product in the current environment and allows marketers to define and deliver against the brand promise.

Value-based pricing research allows the marketing team to understand pricing strategies. This research enables marketers to evaluate what the next best alternative costs (reference pricing) and by examining what the market views as positive and negative differences in value offered by the product and competition.

These studies are, all too often, conducted in a discrete manner and too close to launch. Or companies may conduct these studies simply to answer the burning questions of the moment.

The greatest value is derived when a researcher is able to see these kinds of research to systematically understand the market and uncover the potential for sales and marketing efforts.

In this new environment, with the  pressure to do more with less, marketing research can be a valuable tool to marketers providing a systematic and research-based approach to product launch.

(Abstract from the source: “Planning Ahead for Commercial Launch” by Madhunika Raghavan, Director Research Services and Operations, Maritz Research Pharma Group – www.maritzresearch.com)