Market Strategies, Inc. (MSI), a full-service custom and syndicated, global research and strategic consulting firm, announced key findings from its latest study, 2007 MSImageSM: Oncology Stakeholders. MSI's annual study reveals that Genentech displays the highest "image" with Medical and Hematological Oncologists, repeating its performance from 2006. Genentech also places first with oncology practice managers, but fourth with oncology nurses. The latter two groups were studied for the first time in 2007. Novartis leads with nurses, with Amgen a very close second and AstraZeneca third. These four companies, along with Sanofi-Aventis, complete the top-five for all groups, except nurses who place Roche fifth.
Among Oncologists, Celgene was another big winner as it moved up three places to sixth overall, while companies like Bayer and Genzyme jumped several places, although still fell outside the top ten companies overall.
All three oncology audiences were asked to rate the importance of a wide array of product, sales, marketing and corporate performance measures, and then rank how 23 different companies fared in their performance within these important activities. Market Strategies then applied its proprietary, advanced analytical capabilities to derive which performance measures were most important to oncology stakeholders in formulating their perceptions about each company.
Peter Carlin of MSI's Global Life Sciences Division, stressed that "image leadership helps companies better understand several key issues; how they performed on those measures of greatest importance to their customers, informs companies what their customers think of them and their competitors and, most important, where companies should place their resources in order to enhance customer satisfaction and overall image equity among their customers." "It is our point of view," said Carlin, "that leading image companies also may realize benefits in terms of customer loyalty, purchase intentions, willingness to collaborate with a company, as well as a wide array of other potential benefits. Image leadership is all about customer excellence."
Oncology nurses value information and responsiveness as well, however, education, conferences, and other events specifically targeted to them have a significant impact on a company's image. Additionally, nurses desire representatives who "value their time." For practice managers, who handle the financial aspects of the oncology practices (reimbursement to physician, source of patient payment, billings, etc.), several specific attributes revolving around support of their efforts, such as "clearly communicating company support services," are highly valued. Additionally, seeing "reimbursement specialists" that are responsive and understand practice and patient access to medications are considered "entry ticket" items for practice managers; that is, these are "must haves" for any company to be viewed positively.
