April 2008, Issue 1
Welcome to the latest issue of the G2D newsletter!
Newsletter Contents
• Coming Soon: Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences
• Report Spotlight: Life Science Product Catalogs: Techniques to Increase Sales
• 2008 Life Science Industry Awards
• Methodology Spotlight: Evaluating Web Sites and Catalogs
• Blog Spotlight: Defining the Life Science Industry
Switching costs are an often under-examined factor in analyzing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers may continue to use a brand because of switching costs, rather than due to loyalty and satisfaction. Particularly in the life sciences, switching costs can be substantial and can include the fear of losing the money and time already invested in optimizing a vendor's products to work with specific instrumentation, unhappiness over forgoing a long-term relationship with a favorite sales rep, unwillingness to buy products from vendors that do not have institutional purchasing agreements, and concern over whether a product from a new vendor will work with an existing protocol, among others.
Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences will present essential information on 46 leading life science suppliers in the BioInfo Dashboard(tm), which provides critical information based on scientists' responses to over 20 supplier-specific questions. Included in the BioInfo Dashboard(tm) is the Customer for Life Assessment(tm), based on how strongly scientists agree or disagree with a series of 15 statements relating to the respondent's personal experience with the brand, level of economic investment, technical needs, dependency on the brand's products and services, and the existing business relationship.
For more information about Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences, visit http://www.gene2drug.com/report/auto.192.
Life Science Product Catalogs: Techniques to Increase Sales assesses the role of print and online catalogs -- and how those roles are changing -- from the perspective of over 1,000 life scientists worldwide. We found that despite scientists' preference for online catalogs, the vast majority of them -- approximately 80% -- refer to print catalogs at least once a month. In fact, slightly more than one half of scientists use print catalogs more than once a month.
Nonetheless, respondents reported spending an average of 2.6 hours per week viewing online catalogs -- one hour more than they spend viewing print catalogs. Clearly, online catalogs are becoming increasingly important, though not enough so to completely replace the print catalog.
Life Science Product Catalogs: Techniques to Increase Sales provides suppliers with essential insights on how to optimize their print and online catalogs to best meet the needs of life scientists. The report also helps suppliers to understand how print and online catalogs can serve complementary functions and how best to incorporate the two types of catalog into an overall multi-channel marketing effort.
For more information about Life Science Product Catalogs: Techniques to Increase Sales, visit http://www.gene2drug.com/report/auto.190.
Award season is upon us and the life sciences are not to be left out. The best-in-class recognition awards return for the fourth year with The Life Science Industry Awards 2008. The 2008 Life Science Industry Awards will be announced at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel on June 3, 2008 at a gala event from 5 pm to 8 pm.
The Life Science Industry AwardsTM (LSIA) recognize those life science suppliers with the best solution in 14 separate product categories as well as suppliers that are "best-in-class" in six customer communications and support categories. The winners of these prestigious awards are determined by the industry's own customers-scientists in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, in government and academia who use the products day in and day out. The awards are hosted by The Scientist magazine and BioInformatics, LLC with the support of The Life Science Executive Exchange and The Science Advisory Board. These awards have become a source of pride and a touchstone of excellence for the companies that participate in the life science industry.
The LSIA awards are unique in that they allow scientists to determine the "best-in-class" suppliers in each product and customer communications/support category. BioInformatics, LLC has designed a 34-question electronic survey to be fielded to registered members of The Science Advisory Board and subscribers to The Scientist magazine. These respondents, using their experience as product users, will vote for the suppliers they believe to offer the best overall solution in specified categories. BioInformatics' scoring methodology also takes into consideration practical factors such as satisfaction with product features, likelihood to purchase again, likelihood to recommend the supplier, the supplier with best overall solution, and cost-effectiveness.
For more information on the 2008 Life Science Industry Awards, please visit http://www.lifescienceindustryawards.com.
Evaluating Web Sites and CatalogsThere are two essential steps for suppliers in maximizing the effectiveness of their marketing strategy with regard to print catalogs and Web site marketing efforts. First, vendors must ensure that they understand, in general terms, how scientists use print and online catalogs (see Life Science Product Catalogs: Techniques to Increase Sales). Second, vendors need to understand what customers think of their own catalogs.
Accordingly, BioInformatics developed specific methodologies to provide vendors with critical insights into how useful, appealing, and effective their Web sites and catalogs are to the end user.
In a BioInformatics Web site evaluation, we conduct Web site "scavenger hunts" and professional design evaluations to assess content, navigability, and overall site usability. These tools combine survey data with a technical consultation to provide a full-service solution that results in enhanced Web site performance.
For a BioInformatics catalog evaluation, our readership studies allow suppliers to collect data from actual catalog users. Results are used to evaluate the supplier catalog design and ease-of-use of supplier catalogs.
For more information on sales channel analysis services from BioInformatics, please visit http://www.gene2drug.com/bCustom/bComm_channel.asp.
Defining the Life Science IndustryThe researchers at BioInformatics, LLC peer through the Looking Glass to report and comment on trends in the life science tools industry. The following is excerpted from http://marketanalysts.lifescienceexec.com/.
Defining the Life Science Industry
Posted March 18, 2008 by Bill Kelly
What's in a name? Apparently a lot because I've noticed more and more companies adopting the "life science" moniker - big pharmas, biotechs, CROs, even IT and software companies. I've even seen reports from top-tier consulting firms that include hospitals and physicians in what they refer to as the "life science" space.
As we begin our build up to the 2008 Life Science Industry Awards, I thought it would be useful to revisit how we here at BioInformatics define the "life science industry" and our definition is pretty straightforward: companies that sell products, instruments and services to life scientists.
The life science market is comprised of thousands of products ranging from advanced instrumentation to common laboratory chemicals. In attempting to define any market-especially one so broad and diverse-one is challenged by where to set boundaries with adjacent markets and the definition of where one product category ends and another begins. Such an analysis is always subjective and open to interpretation and further complicated by the need to make trade-offs between the breadth of the market, and the depth of the products to be considered within each category.
For the purpose of the Life Science Industry Awards, we decided that market and product segmentation is most easily understood in terms of the most commonly used scientific techniques. In all, 14 broad techniques were used to define the market's product categories and the study of biological processes as the delimiters of the overall market's boundaries.
To read the rest of this entry or more thoughts from Bill Kelly, visit the blog at http://marketanalysts.lifescienceexec.com/.
Thank you for reading this issue of the G2D newsletter! As always, I welcome your feedback. Send me your complaints, comments, or compliments at a.donathen@gene2drug.com.
All the best,
Amanda
Amanda Donathen
Marketing Communications Manager
BioInformatics, LLC
2111 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 250
Arlington, VA 22201
TEL: (703) 778-3080 x 14
FAX: (703) 778-3081
a.donathen@gene2drug.com
http://www.gene2drug.com
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