Pharmaceutical Company
Case Study: Market Assessment
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Pharmaceutical Company

Social Media Monitoring to Understand Patients Suffering from a Rare Disease

Problem

The client was preparing to launch a product to treat a rare disease


  • Understand patients’ perceptions of their disease, current treatment options and treatments in development, knowing that these patients take an active role in their disease and care

Our Recommended Approach

  • A retroactive six-month review of the most highly engaged patient discussion board
    • The board has approximately 400 members
    • Approximately 1,600 posts were reviewed
  • Obtained administrator permission to monitor the board, assuring full confidentiality of its members
  • Following the initial review, a monthly tracking report was done to continue to monitor patient/caregiver sentiment

Results

  • Informed the client’s market strategy by identifying patient expectations of a new treatment and the company supporting it, patient needs and wants, and key topics of interest to the patients
  • A segmentation was conducted using member profiles, providing additional nuances for this already niche market
  • Primary market research spend was maximized by allowing the team to focus on unanswered questions, further clarification of key issues and pointed hypotheses testing