Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals
Selected Project Summaries |
| Type of Client |
Methodology |
Specific Research Objectives |
Business Application |
| Hospital |
Separate focus groups with:
- Visually impaired respondents
- Hearing impaired respondents (using an interpreter)
- Wheelchair-bound respondents
|
- Gain insight into the challenges that these constituencies face when interacting with hospitals and other healthcare facilities
- Learn if and how hospitals and other healthcare facilities fail to meet the needs of these constituencies
- Elicit suggestions for improving the way these facilities and their staff meet disabled patients' needs
|
- Provide guidance for improving how the hospital accommodates patients with disabilities
|
| Pharmaceutical Company |
Mini-groups and in-depth interviews with moderate and heavy category users
|
- Gain insight into category users and their relationship with products in the category
- Explore attitudes toward specific language
- Gauge the appeal and relevance of alternative positionings
|
- Help guide the repositioning of an existing OTC product, and provide input for strategic and creative development
|
| Pharmaceutical Company |
In-depth interviews with 45- to 65-year-old women who suffer from the condition that the product addresses
|
- Elicit feedback to alternative package designs
- Explore reactions to specific packaging elements
|
- Provide input for optimizing a new package design
|
| Managed Care Organization |
Focus groups
among 64- to 67-year-olds |
- Gain a better understanding of senior citizens' attitudes toward health, healthcare, health insurance, and Medicare
- Assess this audience's awareness and understanding of different Medicare options
- Gain insight into the Medicare decision-making process
- Explore perceptions of the Managed Care Organization and its competitors
|
- Help guide communications development
|
| Pharmaceutical Company |
In-depth interviews
with diabetics
|
- Gain insight into the reasons driving compliance and non-compliance with regard to following one's medication protocol
|
- Provide input into the development of communications to encourage diabetics to take their medication
|
| Hospital |
In-depth interviews with:
- Staff physicians
- Attending physicians
- Administrators
Focus groups with:
- Patients
- Patient Caretakers
|
- Understand the issues, needs, and concerns of the different constituencies
- Explore perceptions of the hospital and its competitors
- Uncover the hospital's strengths to be leveraged and challenges to be addressed
|
- Provide input into the development of a positioning strategy
|
| Pharmaceutical Company |
Mini-groups with consumers who had been recruited to take an herbal supplement for several weeks prior to the groups
|
- Gain insight into consumers' experiences with and attitudes toward conditions that could be addressed by the herbal supplement
- Learn the language used to describe the:
- Condition/experience
- Benefits sought
- Explore reactions to the product
|
- Inform marketing decisions
|
| Clinical Laboratory |
Several different projects involving in-depth phone interviews with physicians, administrators, and other healthcare professionals employed by:
- Hospitals
- Managed care organizations
- Long-term care facilities
- Physicians groups
- Universities
|
- Explore the decision-making process for selecting a clinical laboratory
- Probe attitudes toward -- and perceptions of -- commercial laboratories
- Uncover challenges that commercial laboratories will face in the future
|
- Help the laboratory understand, anticipate, and prepare for the evolving needs of different market segments (as managed care was gaining ascendancy in the healthcare arena)
- Provide insight into how the laboratory could better differentiate itself from competitors
|
| Healthcare System |
Individual interviews among heads of households
|
- Gain feedback to a proposed new tagline
- Explore people's understanding of alternative claims
- Explore reactions to various names and affiliations
|
- Help guide communications-related decisions
|
| Clinical Laboratory |
Focus groups with:
-
Physicians
-
Physicians' office staff
|
- Learn how the reference manual is used as a reference for submitting specimens for testing
- Gain feedback to the reference manual in terms of:
- Layout
- Ease of use
- Value of information provided
|
- Provide guidance for improving the reference manual
|
| Non-Profit Organization |
Focus groups with unmarried women ages:
|
- Gain insight into how young, sexually active, American women think about and deal with the risk of STDs
- Explore reactions to the idea of a microbicide -- a substance that could prevent the transmission of STDs when applied vaginally
- Investigate formulation preferences
- Uncover potential barriers to usage and how they might be addressed
|
- Help guide the development of such a product for the U.S. market
- Provide some indication about how such a product might be introduced into the U.S. market
|
| Pharmaceutical Company |
Quads among sufferers of the condition that the product treats |
Phase 1:
Gain insight into:
- How the symptoms affect sufferers’ lives
- How sufferers describe their symptoms
- What certain words and product claims communicate to sufferers
|
 |
Phase 2:
- Gain feedback to alternative concepts presenting this new product
|
|
Unique Challenge:
The product category did not yet exist in the United States. |
|
Phase 1:
- Help develop a deeper understanding of consumers’ perceptions of the condition
|
|
Phase 2:
- Help select and refine a concept, to be used in volumetric testing
|
|
Pharmaceutical Company |
Multi-national focus groups (U.S., U.K., Australia) among different segments of the target audience
|
- Gain feedback to alternative package designs
- Explore reactions to specific packaging language and claims
Unique Challenge:
The category development, competitive set and competitive packaging differed considerably across countries. |
- Help select and refine a package design (prior to quantitative testing) that would compete well in all three countries
|
Pharmaceutical Company |
Phase 1:
- Focus groups and Quads among Physicians, Product Users and Prospects
|
|
Phase 2:
- Quads among different segments of the target audience
|
|
Phase 1:
- Gain insight into users’ attitudes toward and usage of the Rx product
- Explore physicians’ attitudes toward the Rx product and the idea of a switch to OTC
- Explore prospects’ reactions to this different kind of product
|
|
Phase 2:
- Gain feedback to alternative concepts presenting this revolutionary new product
|
|
Unique Challenge:
The product was so different from other products in the category that members of the target audience needed to stretch beyond what they know.
|
|
Phase 1:
- Provide consumer and gatekeeper input as the client considered pursuing an Rx-OTC switch
|
|
Phase 2:
- Help select and refine a concept, to be used in volumetric testing
|
|
