The Changing Pharma Customer
A recent analysis states that about 64% of doctors in US own smart phones and are using them to supplement their desktop or laptop computer usage to be "always on". An average physician now spends eight hours per week using the Internet for professional reasons, a substantial jump from only 2.5 hours in 2002. Over 60 million U.S. adults consume or contribute health-related social media content, such as blogs, message boards etc and already over 10 million consumers use mobile devices for health and medical purposes.
These facts clearly indicate that the customer profile and their habits are changing fast for the pharma industry. Companies need to have a relook at their existing sales and marketing strategies and evolve their strategy to better engage with the changing requirements of their customers.
The changes are driven primarily by three forces:
1. The digitally networked generation is growing rapidly
2. There is an Increasing number of internet savvy physicians
3. Affordable and Pervasive Technology
These trends are likely to cause disruptions in the way business is conducted in near future, for example
- There will be a shift in types of tools used to influence customers from traditional channels to online services such as Tablet PCs, customer service portals, live video reps, interactive detailing, and e-sampling etc.
- The use of online resources is likely to increase in the near future for content information like clinical textbooks/references, journals, conferences, news, and continuing medical education (CME).
- Customer interactions will morph from Impersonal, Disconnected, Sporadic to Personalized, Contextual and Real-time
The digitally networked customers will very rapidly set the trend and will influence all demographic segments. These empowered customers demand rich contextual and real-time data and analysis to make decisions, trust and rely on the wisdom of their social networks, want instant gratification without wait time and consider many services to be basic and expect them to be free.
Digital marketing, closed loop marketing, social media, mobile devices etc can be information gathering tools as well as customer service enablers. Companies need to reevaluate their existing marketing strategies using pervasive and affordable technology to engage with the empowered customer.
