Timed Assessment Market Research: Implementation and Supplier Considerations

This is the second of a two-part series featuring Timed Assessment studies. The October eTip! provided an overview of this research model. This issue addresses design and supplier considerations.

A company must understand the pulse of the environment in which it does business for its products to maintain maximum market share. Timed Assessments—also known as longitudinal studies—measure key variables in the marketplace and monitor how they change over time. In addition, Timed Assessments address business objectives such as awareness, positioning and prescribing behavior for specific products, and they provide comparable information on competitors. Timed Assessments enhance understanding of market dynamics and help decision-makers implement marketing initiatives that matter now.

As with all market research, Timed Assessments are most effective when they focus on well-defined and integrated goals of a company's internal stakeholders. Everyone in a company who plans to use results of a study should be a part of the initial design process. Studies should be custom-designed to address a product's disease state or therapeutic category, and it should incorporate competitor information and general market trends.

Select a research supplier who understands your business and the complex market in which it competes. With perceptive and strategic foresight into your industry, your research partner can apply appropriate assessment intervals, benchmarks, sampling techniques, testing measures and analytics to meet a specific set of carefully stated objectives—and get it right for the first wave. Diligent pre-testing at the design stage is a must, because consistency throughout a timed assessment program is critical.

Determining how to time the waves of study depends on several variables, including the number of competitors involved, the position and level of threat of these competitors, market size, and the product's lifecycle stage. For example, a product that is recently launched in a highly competitive environment may require frequent assessments to allow marketers to monitor market penetration and factors that might be affecting it. Conversely, a well-established therapy that has retained steady market share may need to be assessed less frequently, until a competitor launches a similar product or some other activity in the market presents a new challenge.

Selecting relevant norms, or benchmarks, for the research can help contextualize results, but they ca