5.1.1. Planning and market insights from participating markets

Each region was represented by an ambassador; these ambassadors had specialized knowledge about their markets: market dynamics, competitive landscape, decision makers, sales channels, etc. All ambassadors were invited to the German headquarter for a kick-off meeting to set the frame of this project and to discuss key facts. It was the task of these ambassadors to ensure that the relevant countries in each market segment (see chapter 4.2.2) were selected to participate in this survey. To share this knowledge, a pre survey market insight exercise was conducted, to gather relevant information to inform the survey and ensure meaningful outcomes of the survey. This exercise was done with the help of an online tool SurveyMonkey (see Appendix A – Market insights questionnaire) and was extended to all FK regions.

The information gathered from the market insight exercise can be clubbed as below:

• Market customer landscape
  • Local company name (in some countries FK subsidiaries have a different name, e.g. PPC in Canada and APP in the US)
  • Product portfolio and distribution across therapeutic areas
  • Key competitors
  • Language and way of communicating with customers o Customer population and characteristics (including the total number of customers available)
  • Available customer information and contact details
  • Key holiday times
• Local market research policies and regulations
  • Suitable incentives for each market e.g. physical gift or online voucher
• Local data privacy and confidentiality regulations
  • Permission to contact customers for market research purposes
• Buy-in
  • General willingness to participate in market research activities
  • Areas of interest and/or suggested topics for consideration in research

The research was structured to uncover specific discussion topics to achieve the objective to investigate the view of the key purchasing decision makers on several key satisfaction parameters:

• Injectable products portfolio: sales and marketing practice and materials
• Quality of client products
• Perception of FK/APP/PPC (APP is FK subsidiary in USA, PPC is subsidiary in Canada) overall performance in comparison to key competitors
• Quality and level of interactions with FK’s personnel (sales, medical marketing)
• Efficiency and security of supply chain
• Product pricing
• Important values for client to have/portray currently and in the future in order to be perceived positively
• Future expectations from suppliers of injectables

In a nutshell, the research parameters determined were:

• Quality
• Price
• Supply
• Sustainability

Before starting the main survey, it was planned to have a temperature check with some selected customers of the participating countries and an internal market pre-survey.