Should You Do Market Research During COVID-19?

Should You Do Market Research During COVID-19?

Uncertainty Sparked By COVID-19

As COVID-19 upends daily life and wreaks havoc on the global economy, companies throughout the healthcare industry are adjusting their strategic plans and putting various activities on hold. Healthcare strategy, marketing, and business development leaders are wondering – is now a good time to do market research given the crisis? Should we move forward with market research studies when customers and other stakeholders are preoccupied with their circumstances? With the environment around the world changing so rapidly, will the findings of today be valuable tomorrow?

In most cases, the answer is yes; now is a good time to do market research. Actionable insights backed by research are more critical now than ever before. However, some barriers present challenges and may make certain types of research unfeasible or less attractive. To better understand how COVID-19 may impact your market research efforts, we recommend evaluating three research dimensions:

  • Who: Target Stakeholders
  • What: Insights
  • How: Methodologies

COVID-19’s Impact on Market Research

Who: Target Stakeholders

While many healthcare providers are on the frontlines of COVID-19, some specialists are experiencing procedure cancellations, office closures, or a shift to only treating essential patients. An overall decline in patient volume for many healthcare providers (HCP), especially in outpatient settings, solves a significant challenge that organizations typically face when conducting research – the accessibility of experts. Finding and recruiting quality stakeholders with relevant expertise can be challenging and time-consuming. For HCP studies, those specialists focused on outpatient treatment or inpatient specialists less involved in COVID-19 treatment like surgeons, are ideal candidates for market research due to potential increased availability with declining patient volume. Other stakeholders, including patients, payers, and industry experts, remain ideal stakeholders for upcoming studies as a result of increased availability with stay-at-home mandates. Inpatient providers and administrators treating the virus likely have limited availability to partake in market research, making studies focused on those stakeholders not ideal.

  Target Stakeholders For COVID-19 Market Research

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What: Insights

The goal of your market research is crucial in determining whether it will be successful during this pandemic. Any research focused on understanding and adapting to the epidemic can support your organization in acclimating to the evolving environment and outperforming competitors. Upstream research for products still in development can continue without significant impact, as can research to understand the general market or competitive dynamics. However, insights gleaned from research that is especially sensitive to the pandemic, like financial benchmarking or willingness to pay analysis, may not be applicable beyond this short-term timeframe and should be delayed until the global healthcare landscape settles.  

 COVID-19 Market Research Insights

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How: Methodologies

With stay-at-home orders and other social distancing mandates in place across the globe, organizations should avoid face-to-face methodologies in most instances. Due to these restrictions, virtual-friendly methods are ideal for any market research during this crisis. This could include phone interviews, online surveys, and online focus groups, which specialists are still eager to participate in. These methods tap into the rise of online engagement we are seeing during the pandemic, making recruitment easier for interviews and surveys.

COVID-19 Market Research Methods

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Moving Forward With Market Research

Although COVID-19 has derailed many aspects of our society, your organization can continue with a critical activity: market research. Modifying your strategies to the conditions of the pandemic can allow you to move forward and even collect qualitative and quantitative information more easily.

Kx Advisors, Your Partner in Strategy

Our healthcare experts can guide you through adjusting your strategy with insights gathered from market research. As data-driven decision-makers, we’re experts at designing research to inform quantitative models, developing forecasts in emerging and innovative markets, and quantifying what is challenging to quantify. We can support your organization with market research and turn the results into actionable insights.

 

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Adapting In COVID-19: A Product Forecasting Framework

Adapting In COVID-19: A Product Forecasting Framework

Kx’s Key Takeaways For Product and Finance Teams   

  • Separate The Trough And Rebound: Modeling both the duration of the trough and the slope of the rebound, from peak COVID-19 infections to recovery, is critical to developing an accurate product forecast    
  • Layer In Regional Segmentation: Accurate forecasting requires more regional segmentation than most models demand due to the local variation in COVID-19 cases and varied government restrictions responding to the virus  
  • Expand Data Sources: Although COVID-19 is unprecedented in many respects, historical data can be used to model its impact. Utilizing a variety of data sources—analog regions that roll back restrictions earlier, patient and provider research, and prior economic downturns —can provide a valuable frame of reference to develop a more informed forecast  
  • Make It A Living, Breathing Model: With new restrictions and the medical community’s fast-paced response, it’s critical for companies to regularly monitor and update forecasting assumptions as the pandemic evolves   

COVID-19 Impacts Product Forecasting For Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies  

Dealing with significant evolving obstacles associated with COVID-19, businesses worldwide are adjusting their 2020 strategic plans. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies face particularly complicated hurdles, including procedure delays, office closures, and more that prevent patient access to their products. In this time of uncertainty, it’s critical to develop an informed view of future sales to establish a strategic plan and mitigate future risks to the business.  

Your Adaptable Product Forecasting Framework  

Kx Advisors created this framework to assist organizations in accurately forecasting sales during a time of high uncertainty with COVID-19. We recommend approaching the problem in two stages: the trough and the rebound. While organizations around the globe are currently in midst of the trough, understanding both stages is crucial for full-scale recovery. The questions we’ve identified for this framework can be split into three categories of barriers that COVID-19 presents: policy barriers, behavioral barriers, and economic barriers. Policy barriers are directly related to the pandemic management decisions of governments and medical associations, while behavioral barriers are driven by changes in industry competitor, physician, and patient behavior, and economic barriers are those created by changing economic conditions affecting willingness to pay.

 

COVID-19 Product Forecasting Framework Graphic Depicting Trough and Rebound

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Planning During COVID-19  

While no one can predict the future, this framework should help you gain critical insights to better project and respond to these challenges. Leveraging this tool to strategize is only step one; your product team must continually monitor the quickly evolving factors impacting the framework’s components and adjust your strategy as needed to stay ahead of the economic effect of this pandemic.  

Kx Is Here To Help  

Struggling with product forecasting during this crisis? With extensive forecasting experience, we’re experts at quantifying what is hard to quantify.  Our healthcare experts will rapidly analyze the changing field and build strategies with your team around the opportunities we identify. 

 

Contact Our Team Today