The cuts in the Public health spending is forcing pharmaceutical companies to look for other avenues for business development, such as exiting social security coverage for certain medications.
Given this situation, it is necessary to determine the impact on the prescription habits of specialist doctors as well as the number of clients willing to buy the drug, the price and the optimal presentation that allows profit maximization.
After the health cuts, many laboratories are considering the possibility of leave social security coverage and market their medicines independently. It is at this moment when it is necessary to know how this decision will impact the prescribing group and the end user.
It is widely accepted that, in the real world, prescribers/buyers do not make decisions based exclusively on a single attribute, such as the drug or the laboratory, but rather, before making a prescription or purchase decision, they analyze drugs carefully. all its possible combinations of characteristics (presentation, price, social security reimbursement, generic...).
He Conjoint analysis (joint mean analysis), is a multivariate analysis technique that reproduces these complex decisions of consumers/prescribers and their results help in the optimal marketing design of the drug.
At a statistical level, what determines the Conjoint is the usefulness and importance that the prescriber/buyer assigns to each of the elements of the offer analyzed to decide to prescribe/purchase it (presentation, format, price, associated laboratory,...).
The analysis is designed by determining the elements or factors keys in the purchase decision and the different values that these can take in the market.
This analysis determines how the exit from social security coverage impacts providing the laboratory with a objective tool which enables adjust the supply of drugs to the optimal level demanded by the market taking into account the competitive environment in which the products move and determining the importance of variables such as price in the prescription.
He CBC (Choice Based Conjoint) It's one of the most used conjoint models for its effectiveness in extracting and analyzing the behavior and preferences of the prescriber/consumer.
It is a tool that has been providing, for years, invaluable services to analyze processes of “decision making”, market demands and volumes.
With the CBC, the changes in markets or products can be incorporated into the simulation (for example, refund issue, new releases, price decrease or increase, format changes, presentations...) to predict how prescribers/buyers will react to them and adjust your price to the penny.
The methodology It is based on the fact that each interviewee is shown different screens where, in each of them, the different drugs on the market, both their own and those of the competition, are represented.
On each screen the drugs, packaging and prices change and in each of them the doctor or buyer interviewed must choose which option they would prescribe/purchase.
Much of the statistical power of this exercise lies in the fact that it is very easy to answer by the interviewees and that provides information very rich and indirect, much more real than any direct exercise or technique.
This methodology offers very good statistical results since represents with excellent accuracy the reality of the medical consultation or the reality in the pharmacy where doctors or buyers only choose to prescribe/purchase (OTC) one of the drugs presented to them.
Jennifer Varon
Key Account Manager in Hamilton
