Stanton R. Mehr, President, SM Health Communications
LLC
Market research organizations, which I’ll call MROs, try
very hard to evolve their craft according to current trends and the shifting
tides of popular technology. Traditional in-depth telephone interviews are
highly effective and, armed with a honed set of screening questions, can be the
best method of meeting the sponsor’s objectives. Effective? Yes. Sexy? No way.
Surveys enhanced by Web distribution and on-line responses (think Survey Monkey®)
still are commonly used and extremely cost effective. But this doesn’t tap into
the nature of today’s popular media.
Recently there have been concerning revelations about the
data being collected on browsers like Google and sites like Facebook to create
a profile of the viewer, with an eye towards customizing the advertising they
see. The collection of data for external uses, such as that publicized on the
March 10th broadcast of CBS’s 60 Minutes,
may finally tamp down the fires of social media market research. Much of
this market research is based around singular data points (e.g., a person
“liking” a particular service, or posting about their experience at a
particular resort or hotel). These data
points can help profile the person and, if large and consistent enough in their
personal network, a group. This is the essence of social media. It can be very
useful in marketing health care products to specific consumers, like proton
pump inhibitors to those searching for information on acid reflux.
If you join a special interest group on the Web, such as a
patient-support group for (fill in just about any disorder), you can bet the
pharmaceutical companies and their market researchers are crawling over the
site, collecting information about what you like, what you don’t, and every bit
of demographic data they can extract from your participation. These folks are
self-selected for this specific interest, and obtaining market research on
these like-minded group members can be a very effective endeavor., If the MRO
formulates and conducts the research well, it collects not only singular data
points from singular individuals, but also data and social context to the market research results. That’s what
old-style, one-way mirror focus groups have always sought to achieve.
Let’s take this consumer-based approach and apply it to
health executives. If there were on-line community sites in which health plan
executives (payers) joined voluntarily and where they discussed frequently a
range of topics in conversational style, this community engagement might just put
a market research project into overdrive. The group think, coupled with
individual responses, on qualitative topics may yield fascinating insights and
do it in a very cost-effective environment.
The resulting lengthy discussion, filled with nuance,
agreement, disagreement, and insight, can be a challenge for most. The trick is
the ability to tease out the social context as well as the top-line responses
so as to yield more informed payer market research, but using “sexy” social
media so many clients crave today.
Questions:
1.
Does your MRO have a vehicle for payer interest groups to freely discuss
matters of importance to them?
2.
Can the MRO use this type of social media to report the social context in which
responses are made?
3.
What is your greatest challenge in meeting social media-related research
requests by your executives?
SM Health Communications provides writing, consulting, and
innovative market research services for the payer markets. Its proprietary
P&T Insight™ virtual P&T Committee program is the leading mock P&T
Committee product in the field. For more information, please visit www.smhealthcom.com or contact Stanton R. Mehr, President, at
stan.mehr@smhealthcom.com.
