Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry

Market Analyses

Strategic Analysis for Pharmaceutical Companies with Geomarketing

A thorough market analysis is the basis for every successful sales strategy.For sales, the more complex the market, the more important the role geographic analysis plays.

Geographic analyses help pharmaceutical companies for example to find where their target groups are located, where untapped potential lies and where the competition is strong.They provide important information for the development of action plans, marketing activities and sales structures. 

Pharmaceutical companies can carry out very precise regional market analyses with the help of geomarketing software: Be it on a sales area and sales region level or even for specific locations, such as a single pharmacy, medical center or clinic. 

Microgeographic data on demographics and socio-economics, such as the age distribution in the catchment area, provide information on feasible market and patient potential.

Geomarketing analyses of regional potential also help answer the following strategically important questions: 

• Identification of physicians and pharmacies with the highest sales potential
• Sales area and sales representative planning
• Onsite consulting according to patient potential
• Performance monitoring of sales representative appointments
• Monitoring and management of sales activities
• Competitive analysis and market observation
• Category management

Geomarketing software allows pharmaceutical companies to quickly query and evaluate strategic data. By displaying the results on maps, spatial patterns quickly become clear, revealing such things as regional sample sizes for certain medical conditions or prescriptions for certain products. 

With the help of microgeographic information, even individual doctors and pharmacies can be analyzed. The analysis results thus make it possible to develop highly targeted sales activities.

Since it is possible to save analyses as preset standards, they can be performed again quickly and easily. This saves a great deal of time, specifically for reporting.

Sales Potential

Identification of physicians and pharmacies with the highest sales potential

For pharmaceutical companies to achieve sales success, it is critical that the sales representatives speak with the right doctors and pharmacies. In this case right means those doctors and pharmacists with the greatest sales potential. The sales representatives therefore have to know who writes the most prescriptions and which pharmacies have the highest sales for the relevant product segment.

Identifying Doctors and Pharmacies with the Highest Potential

Which doctors and pharmacies represent the highest sales potential for pharmaceutical companies depends entirely on the product range and sales targets. 

Example 1:

It is known that people over 60 years with low incomes tend to suffer from diseases of the cardiovascular system or diabetes. For pharmaceutical companies that sell such medicines, specialized centers and health care clinics are therefore not the only sources to offer high sales potential. Diabetologists and internists with offices in low-income residential areas with an elderly population are also very relevant contacts. 

Example 2:

The pharmaceutical company wants to stimulate sales for their medications to help with menopausal symptoms. In this case, they should know the location of gynecologists and pharmacies serving a large number of women between the age of 45 and 60. 

These doctors and pharmacies that offer the greatest turnover potential for such products can be quickly and easily located with the help of specific analysis models and geomarketing software or a geoinformation system (GIS). In addition, the GIS also combines company data and external data. Based on spatial proximity, the GIS calculates potential and generates sales forecasts. 

The analyses take a variety of spatial data into account: 

• Prescription volume of doctors
• Pharmaceutical market data
• Results from field surveys
• Direct sales
• Demographic and socioeconomic data of the living environment

Other environment factors, such as employee density, public transport, public facilities and other footfall generators are also taken into consideration as quality characteristics in the evaluation of locations.

Competition and Market

Geomarketing Competition Analyses and Market Observation for Pharmaceutical Companies

Through market observation and competitive analyses on maps, pharmaceutical companies regularly evaluate the performance of the competition in the market. Geomarketing software thereby ensures systematic and detailed analysis results. 

Pharmaceutical companies can use geomarketing for market observations and competitive analysis to: 

• Obtain information that is as complete as possible on the achievable customer and patient potential in their own territories and that of their competition
• Gain information on the sales activities of their competitors and assess their effectiveness
• Critically analyze and assess their own regional sales activities
• Determine action plans
• Find facts to support decisions on restructuring and expansion

External and internal data combined and consolidated with spatial data form the basis for competitive analyses. The geomarketing software calculates areas and uses simulations to obtain as holistic a portrait of regional market areas as possible. 

Example:

A pharmaceutical manufacturer sees that sales for their blood pressure medication have declined significantly over the past month. Sales for a competitor’s product, however, have increased. This development is not concentrated in certain sales areas. The phenomenon occurs at certain points spread throughout the entire market, in other words at certain doctor’s offices. 

An analysis of the customer groups reveals that the decline in sales is occurring among general practitioners, but not among endocrinologists and cardiologists. Therefore, it must be a product-specific marketing campaign from a competitor especially targeting general practitioners.

The pharmaceutical company must therefore react differently than they would for a decrease in sales in just a single sales area. The pharmaceutical company could only gain this insight through a competitive analysis based on geomarketing.

In this way, pharmaceutical companies are able to obtain information about the development of their competitor’s sales according to: 

• Territories / regions
• Products
• Indicators
• Customers (doctors, pharmacies)

The geomarketing mapping software displays the results of the competitive analysis on maps. Thus, it can easily be seen at a glance where the competition is particularly active or slowing down.