The Diabetes market is hyper-competitive, with minimal clinical differentiation. Physicians choose based on access and ingrained heuristics, with very little genuine loyalty towards brands. our client sought to create value beyond the clinical and be the leader in future digital innovation. To get at this problem, S+R worked to:
- Identify the overarching, core unmet needs in order to feed the innovation engine in the injectable diabetes space
- Understand the different segments of patients and physicians within the space, and develop strategies to address their unique unmet needs with an innovative digital tool
- Define and size patient and physician segments in order to uncover who to target and what they need from a digital innovation
The Solution
To first identify the key needs of the client stakeholders and better understand the injectable Diabetes space, S+R began with a “Discovery” phase that included desk research, KOL interviews with Healthcare Digital Futurists and leaders in the Diabetes space, and internal client stakeholder interviews.
Based on the guidance from internal stakeholders and the learnings from the Discovery phase, we dove into a qualitative exploratory phase. The S+R team interviewed a mix of patient types and physicians (PCPs and Endocrinologists) across the US, UK, and Italy. Using a combination of projective techniques and probes to encourage first person storytelling, we generated a set of hypothesized unmet needs for both respondent types.
These unmet needs were then utilized in a quantitative phase where we employed the “Jobs to be Done” methodology, assessing the importance of various desired outcomes and the degree to which these outcomes are satisfied today. The responses to these questions were used to segment respondents based on their unmet needs and to size opportunities amongst the segments. The questionnaire also included a set of questions exploring current digital usage and attitudes both related to Diabetes and more generally. Answers to digital attitudinal were then used to enrich our understanding of the segments by predicting their likelihood to adopt an innovation.
Through analysis we produced a detailed segmentation, setting our clients for actionable success, and making strategic recommendations on who best to target with their digital innovation.
The Outcome
Multi-phase research uncovered five segments for both physicians and patients in the diabetes space, based on unmet needs, attitudes towards Diabetes care, and likelihood to uptake a digital innovation. These segments were brought to life through an understanding of their needs, wants, and who they are at their core.
We developed Strategic Value Targets for our client, by taking into consideration the size of the segment and the size of the need for each segment, as well as the type of person who makes up each group.
As a result of our work, the clients were able to leverage their new understanding of their customer segments, as well as our recommendations around who to target, to create their digital innovation.