ABSTRACT
Analytic techniques and quantitative measurement play a significant role in each of these dimensions of discovery. This chapter describes the data sources, tools, and analysis techniques employed in the Discovery phase. It covers the basic concepts of pharmaceutical forecasting. As part of the discovery process leading to relationship marketing (RM) planning, it is important to directly hear the attitudes, preferences, and points of view of the actual stakeholders, especially patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs). The output of the operational assessment is a report that summarizes company readiness for developing RM programs, for consumers and/or professionals. Professional market research consists of essentially the same techniques as consumer market research, described in the section above, except of course they are conducted with HCPs. For professional RM discovery, there are an increasing number of social media websites with communities or discussion boards, including Sermo, Medscape, and Ozmosis.
