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2025年3月23日日曜日

(8) Quantify Pts Journey by Market Research Results

Insight based Brand Plan

Usually Launch Brand Team is established two years before the release of Product X, and I think it took about six months to complete the quantitative and qualitative research to get to this point. With one and a half years to go until launch, the Senior Management in Japan, APAC, and Global are starting to feel the daily pressure to "Create a concrete Launch Brand Plan! Take action! KPIs!!"

The pressure is there because the Launch PMO (project management office) was launched and the Launch project manager was suddenly appointed from within the company.

  • Launch experience
  • Marketing experience and skills
  • Forecasting and research experience and skills
  • Project management skills

are required, but it can be quite difficult as there are cases where a brand manager is put in charge of the role and ends up panicking and failing, or where an external consultant is brought in but has no knowledge of pharmaceutical marketing and is merely a Ganz chart expert, or where a foreign external consultant who has experience in pharmaceutical marketing but cannot speak Japanese is sent in, which leads to communication difficulties and an increase in work and delays. (I got a bit off topic)

Let's return to the topic of quantifying Pts journey. After conducting pre-research web searches, literature, desk research, and qualitative/quantitative research, I think it’s safe to say that you’ve now gathered almost all the information you need to create a Launch Brand Plan.

Although it is unclear whether this will be included in the quantification of Pts journey, the quantitative physician survey is designed to be "scalable to the entire market." In this quantitative survey of physicians, we set the broad definition as "physicians who have experience of administering antihistamines to a patient with hay fever at least once in the past year" and request the survey from "all physicians registered on the survey company's panel," and then from the ratio of (physicians eligible for the survey) / (physicians requesting the survey), we can estimate the number of "physicians who have experience of administering antihistamines to a patient with hay fever at least once in the past year." At this time, make sure to ask the survey company in advance to provide you with information on screen-outs (the number of doctors per consultation who were not surveyed). If you don't tell the research company this, you won't get the data.

I have never conducted market research on hay fever myself, so I can only imagine what the results would be based on my imagination and desk research, so please bear with me as from this point onwards my findings will likely differ quite a bit from reality.

First, let's consider: "How many doctors are there nationwide who treat hay fever?" and "How many facilities treat hay fever and prescribe antihistamines?"

The "Handbook of Welfare Statistics" is useful for determining the denominator. You can find out the number of doctors (by medical specialty) and hospital private practice doctors nationwide.

# of physicians are

Anyone involved in marketing in the pharmaceutical industry would benefit from keeping these numbers in mind. The rest is from the quant market research results shows

  • 100% of HP's ENT and allergy doctors
  • 50% of HP's internal medicine doctors
  • 50% of HP's ophthalmology doctors
  • 50% of private practice physicians (regardless of medical specialty)
see hay fever.  Now we can calculate

  • HP ENT drs: 937*100%=3,937 drs
  • HP allergy drs：102*100%＝51 drs
  • HP internal medicine drs：21,520*50%=10,260 drs
  • HP ophthalmology  drs：4,886*50%＝2,443 drs
  • GP : 100,000*50％＝50,000 drs5万人

It was estimated that a total of 66,651 doctors, including 16,651 HP doctors and 50,000 private practice doctors, are prescribing antihistamines nationwide. (I don't know if the actual number is more or less, because I've never actually investigated it.)

Regarding patients, we have roughly estimated that 50 million people nationwide have hay fever symptoms, of which 16 million are taking prescription oral medications and another 16 million are taking over-the-counter oral medications, based on Pts Journey, created from a web search. We will also say that a quantitative patient survey confirmed that this ratio (about half and half) was also reached.

Once quantitative research results available, you can understand the Pts journey in greater detail

  • There are 50 million patients.
  • Patients who receive prescription drugs from hospitals and take them every year = 10 million
  • 15 million patients who sometimes (or have sometimes) received prescription drugs and took them, though not every year
  • Patients who do not take prescribed medicines from hospitals = 25 million

That's what we found out from the survey results. Similarly, by summarizing the severity of symptoms, prescription of antihistamines, intention to use product X, etc., we were able to create a quantitative Pts journey that looks something like this.




The purpose of quantitative Pts journey is not to "create" but how to use Pts journey (quantitative) is important, and the main purpose is to quantitatively grasp "where the opportunities are." Let's think about it from upstream.

（1）Ensuring that patients return to the clinic annually
Of the 50 million people, only 20%, or 10 million people, visit the hospital every year. If we could get all of them to "visit the hospital every year," sales of Product X could increase five-fold at most. Of course, this would mean an increase in the number of patients with mild symptoms visiting the hospital, so it would not be five-fold, but there is still a huge opportunity here.

We present information about Product X even to patients who do not visit the hospital every year, and as a result, they have shown a fairly strong desire to take the medication. Therefore, we would like to somehow send a message once a month, using Product X as an opportunity to encourage patients to visit the hospital in search of Product X.

However, it is very difficult for Pts Journey to encourage upstream behavioral change (i.e. raising awareness of the disease and encouraging people to seek medical help), and there are not many success stories. When looking at the quantitative pts journey for Global and other companies, we often see the message, "This is a big opportunity! Do something!" However, there are also large DTC elements, and there are things that can be done and things that cannot be done. This is where we need to be ambitious and think of various ideas, but at the same time, we also need to calmly consider the feasibility.

(2) Increase antihistamine prescription (Treatment choice)
Most hay fever sufferers are already prescribed antihistamines, so it would be difficult to increase sales of Product X by increasing opportunities here. This is often referred to as treatment choice because it is a choice based on treatment category, such as "drug therapy" or "counseling."

(3) Increase product X share % in antihistamines (Brand choice)
For most brands, this moment = brand choice is often the most important thing. For product X, “doctors’ intent to prescribe = 40%.” Although it is a generic drug with many competitors, Product X has a very clear point of differentiation in that it is "effective for one month," so I think that such a high prescription intention is reflected in the results of the quantitative survey (of course, there are people who would say that it should be even higher). In order to actually "increase this 40%," it is necessary to know "what are the drivers/barriers for prescribing Product X?" based on doctors' honest opinions, and I would like to show this in the qualitative Pts journey section.

(4)Reduce patient refusal rates
Quant research results show that even when doctors are willing to prescribe medication to their patients, 20% of patients refuse. While 20% may seem like a small number, reducing your rejection rate can have a significant impact on your sales. Here too, we need to know the honest reasons why patients refuse to take product X even when their doctor suggests it be prescribed.

(5)Increase prescription frequency of product X
Research shows that "Product X is prescribed 1.3 times on average." The hay fever season lasts for about two months, so the maximum should be 2.0, but the average number of prescriptions is low for reasons such as the desire to take medication only when the hay fever is particularly severe. Here too, it is necessary to understand the true feelings and needs of doctors and patients and come up with countermeasures.

Actually, we've been gathering information about the hay fever market and Product X for about half a year now, and have been using our brains a lot, so what we're writing here may be a matter of organizing and summarizing our thoughts, but we think it's best to pay attention to things like whether there are pitfalls or hidden opportunities.

Furthermore, by quantifying and summarizing the pts journey in this way, the slides can provide senior management and global people in Japan with an easy, quantitative understanding of the state of the hay fever market in Japan. I believe that most companies have this type of quantified pts journey included in their brand plan templates, and it is a very user-friendly solution that is updated annually even after the brand is launched.

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