April 2008, Issue 2
Welcome to the latest issue of the G2D newsletter!

Newsletter Contents

Report Insights
Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences

In Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences, we examine the forces, both external and internal, that motivate scientists to consider switching or to actually switch brands. Based on the opinions of over 2,000 life scientists worldwide, this report provides essential insights on how to keep your customers satisfied and how to take advantage of your competition's unsatisfied customers.

The most common reason scientists do not consider switching brands is that they are satisfied with their current vendor(s). The risk vendors face by relying on satisfaction as a barrier to switching is that a single event--a one-time supply chain failure, for instance--could occur that could alter a customer's perceptions of the vendor and their intention to repurchase from that vendor. In contrast, the fact that many experiments are optimized to a brand's products--the second most common reason for not considering switching brands--effectively limits a scientist's purchasing options to a single vendor.

While high levels of satisfaction are necessary for customer retention, scientists may consider switching brands if they perceive that their prices are too high. These findings indicate that price perceptions may significantly affect customer retention rates and suggest that vendors may benefit from actively managing their customers' opinions and expectations about price in addition to those for quality.

Reasons Scientists Consider Switching Brands

For more information or a complimentary executive summary about Understanding Switching Dynamics: Maximizing Customer Retention in the Life Sciences, visit http://www.gene2drug.com/report/auto.192..html.

2008 Life Science Industry Awards
Nominees Announced

BioInformatics, LLC and The Scientist hosted a webinar to announce the nominees for the 2008 Life Science Industry Awards. The 20 award categories are:

Was your company among those nominated for one or more awards? To find out, visit http://www.lifescienceindustryawards.com/2008/categories.html

Choosing a Research Panel: Our Advantages

BioInformatics sponsors The Science Advisory Board (SAB), an online community of over 36,000 scientists, physicians and healthcare professionals from around the world. The Science Advisory Board "convenes" regularly via the World Wide Web (www.scienceboard.net) to voice expert opinions on a wide variety of issues relating to biomedical research and clinical technologies. These experts-representing all aspects of the life sciences and medicine-have agreed to make themselves available to participate in market research activities for both our published reports and custom research projects.

This incomparable market research tool is available to answer critical questions at any time. What's more, with a wealth of data continuously gathered about these panelists from their registration forms and their participation in past studies, we can effortlessly identify those members that will provide precisely the answers needed.

Using The Science Advisory Board to conduct studies has several unique advantages:

Growing Global Panel: Currently the online community consists of 36,645 life science and biomedical professionals from around the world who enthusiastically voice their opinions, state their supplier preferences and describe their unmet needs via online surveys and focus groups.

Fast & Accurate Results: This panel of experts provides answers to critical marketing questions in days, rather than weeks.

Exceptional Targeting Ability: Respondents can be selected based on registration information (i.e., market segments, areas of expertise, geographic locations, etc.) as well as on how they answered questions in previous studies such as the products they use and their preferred suppliers, etc.

Qualified Respondents: We maintain strict control over who we invite to the survey and have quality control procedures to make sure the response quota is filled with only qualified scientific customers.

Predictable Response Rates: The unique positioning of The Science Advisory Board and an attractive rewards program encourages membership and frequent participation. Because it is an "opt-in community," high response rates are typical.

Follow-up Studies: Follow-up questions can be posed to specific individuals or additional surveys can be fielded to the same group of respondents so that clients can track changing perceptions, purchasing patterns, etc. over time.

For more information on how you can reach members of The Science Advisory Board, visit http://www.gene2drug.com/methodology/members.asp.

Methodology Spotlight
Customer Loyalty

According to the 2005 edition of BioInformatics' best-selling Marketing to Life Scientists series, "A personal recommendation from colleagues is considered the most influential source when purchasing a new product or service."

Our research has confirmed a strong relationship between one's likelihood to recommend a brand and one's satisfaction with various elements of the brand. In gauging Customer Loyalty, the Net Promoter Score is a widely accepted technique for measuring customer-based brand promotion, a frequent occurrence among life scientists. The quantitative measurement that is easy to gauge, connected to growth, and provides a means to prioritize investments, especially when monitored on a recurring timeframe monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on the likelihood that a customer would recommend a particular brand to a colleague. The likelihood question is structured as an 11-point scale, with 10=Extremely Likely and 0=Extremely Unlikely to recommend the brand. Promoters are respondents selecting a 10 or 9, Passives are those selecting 8 or 7, and Detractors are respondents indicating their likelihood as 6 or less. The Net Promoter Score is obtained through the following calculation:

NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors

While knowing your company's score is helpful, it only becomes actionable when you understand which customer groups are responsible for the NPS, what effect each component of the customer experience has, and how your company ranks among your competitors.

For more information on a Customer Loyalty assessment from BioInformatics, visit http://www.gene2drug.com/bCustom/bProduct_loyalty.asp.

Blog Spotlight
Brand New Confusion

Seen through the eyes of scientists working at multiple institutions and in different countries, Life Science Tools of the Trade, a "collective blog," focuses on learning about, purchasing and using life science products and services.

Brand New Confusion
Posted April 12, 2008 by rwintle

In this post-90's biotech era which we all inhabit, I'm finding that brand recognition is becoming a confusing game indeed. Old favourite boutique vendors like Molecular Probes have been swallowed up by enormous, multi-tentacled distributors like Invitrogen, and keeping track of who's distributing your favourite brand of pipettor, or water filter, or tissue culture media, can make for hours of fun and games. Even the big players keep getting bought and sold - just try to sort out the whole Merck/EMD fine chemical business, or the ownership structure of VWR, if you have some time to kill. And I'm still trying to get my head around Thermo Fisher. What does Thermo Electron have to do with distributing pipette tips and latex gloves? How, if at all, is this related to Thermo Finnigan? It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

And then there's my personal favourite suite of technologies du jour, loosely grouped into "next-generation" DNA sequencing, or NGS. Illumina buys Solexa, Applied Biosystems buys Agencourt Personal Genomics (but not Agenourt Bioscience, which is owned by Beckman Coulter - are you following this?), Roche gobbles up 454 Life Sciences. Pacific Biosciences is next, mark my words, with rumours of intense interest from Applied Biosystems, and probably many others. Helicos too, perhaps, so look for a merger or acquisition there, although with a market cap of $147 million and $50 million in the bank at the end of 2007, they could probably stay on their own for a while.

In the case of Illumina's almost-works-most-of-the-time Genome Analyzer, most people still call it a "Solexa". At the recent AGBT conference, which I've rattled on about in more detail elsewhere, practically the only people using the term "Illumina Genome Analyzer" were members of the large posse of Illumina employees in attendance. And most people don't call the ex-454 machine a "Roche" GS-FLX; to most, it's still a "454", although this seems to me to be waning a bit under the crushing weight of Roche's marketing machinery. Remarkably, the 454 Life Sciences website still exists, and is still a much, much better source of information on this NGS system than the Roche website, which is large, messy, and rather full of the 150,000 other things that Roche sells.

On the other hand, Applied Biosystems seems to have triumphed in branding their SOLiD system, and virtually nobody seems to remember that this was developed by Agencourt Personal Genomics and that the chemistry used was, for a time, referred to as the "APG process", even by AB itself. Now it's just SOLiD, small "i" and all, and the scientific community in general seems to have accepted that brand. Timing, I suppose, is everything.

Now, if someone could just explain to me why all these darn NGS boxes are blue...

For more insights, visit the Life Science Tools of the Trade blog at http://products.scienceboard.net/.


Thank you for reading this issue of the G2D newsletter! As always, I welcome your feedback. Send me your complaints, comments, or compliments at c.seguin@gene2drug.com.

Best Regards,
Catherine

Catherine Seguin
Director of Communications
BioInformatics, LLC
2111 Wilson Boulevard
Suite 250
Arlington, VA 22201
TEL: (703) 778-3080 x 13
FAX: (703) 778-3081
c.seguin@gene2drug.com
http://www.gene2drug.com

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