Abstract:

Agencies specialising in pharmaceutical market research are operating in an increasingly complex market, a trend which is expected to continue as the healthcare environment evolves. The purpose of this paper is to bring forward the hypothesis that to remain competitive and ensure future success, pharmaceutical market research agencies or partners within agencies will need to become more specialised, either in particular therapeutic or geographical areas or methodological research approaches, as their role changes from a data supplier towards that of a consultant. To bolster this hypothesis, some results will be included from a primary research study which was conducted with market research executives from both pharmaceutical firms and market research agencies. This research was carried out by mail and results (responses) reflect the beliefs of 25 market research executives from the pharma industry and 9 market research executives from pharma research agencies. This corresponds to a 22 % reponse rate and a 29 % response rate for each group respectively. Even though the results of the primary research are limited as to their quantitative use (the exact sample composition is not known) they bring some interesting aspects and ideas forward related to the topic of this paper, and have for this reason been included where appropriate.