Note: This post is based on the presentation that CEO Michele Derai made at the 2014 PBRIG Winter Education workshop.

As we discussed  last week, in Part 1 of this topic, the role of patients and physicians is changing and patients have increasing responsibility in their care.  This has important implications for pharmaceutical companies, as well as for market researchers.

For pharma companies, patients are becoming a major stakeholder, whose individual needs must be considered, separately from those of physicians. This is a new way of thinking for many companies, since for years, the physicians have been seen as the conduit to and proxy for patients. Here at Aptel Research, we have seen this shift as clients are now thinking specifically about patients when creating marketing and pricing strategies, as well as in the growing availability of patient support programs.

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Aptel Research, a specialty marketing research and consulting company that provides actionable strategic insights to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, released its newest report Patient Voices Series™ Rheumatoid Arthritis (US).  This report provides rich insights into the emotional and rational factors that impact the patient journey for people living with moderate-severe RA. The report captures the various aspects of the patient journey from symptoms to diagnosis to treatment. It sheds light on a variety of issues including how patients feel when diagnosed, how RA impacts their life, what are the unique characteristics of patients who request their biologic therapy, the mindset of patients who have been on 3+ prior biologics, and more.

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In our previous blogs, we discussed the challenges of navigating cultural and language differences when conducting global market research. Those challenges could be described as anthropological; they’re byproducts of human diversity. But the global market researcher must also grapple with the ways in which political, institutional and economic factors influence market conditions and market access around the world. For the pharmaceutical industry, this means taking into account each country’s unique medical environment.

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In our last blog, we discussed the challenge of translating ideas when conducting market research in countries that speak different languages. This time, we’ll tackle deeper cultural differences—those that influence behavioral norms.

Some of these quirks are simply matters of local etiquette, which any traveler can study before going abroad. (The thumb-to-forefinger gesture that means “OK” in the United States, for example, is an obscene gesture in much of South America.) Other behavioral differences, however, can profoundly affect both the research process and its results.

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Part 1: Translating Ideas

Even when working in a single country, a qualitative market researcher has to be a kind of cultural anthropologist. To achieve accurate results, it’s necessary to adjust for the differing mindsets of broad groups of customer targets (for example, healthcare professionals, patients, and caregivers), as well as the subtler influence of factors such as physician specialty, geographic location, and level of education. Those variables apply throughout the market research process, from the design of screeners and discussion guides through the analysis of field work.

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The difference between qualitative marketing research and quantitative is clear enough, it comes down to numbers. Do you want to know statistics on what people like, or do you want to find out what do they like and why? Quantitative marketing research will get you those statistics, but you need qualitative marketing research to define which information is worth quantifying, and to explain the MEANING of the numbers. Both methods have their role, if they are used wisely and appropriately.

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