Marketing to Life Scientists: Navigating Channels Through Segmentation

Summary

Note: Please be aware that the PDF price includes a Enterprise-Wide Electronic License and one print copy.

While scientists may exhibit uniform product and technology preferences, how they prefer to find out about these offerings varies according to market segment, age, years of research experience, job position and gender. Our latest report, Marketing to Life Scientists: Navigating Channels Through Segmentation, is the seventh in a series that provides suppliers with an in-depth examination of the opinions and preferences of life science customers. For the first time, it utilizes the results of a CHAID analysis (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector), which is an established statistical technique for market segmentation analyses. CHAID allows suppliers to identify the key drivers or influences in identifiable markets. These significant drivers can be any combination of survey variables: demographic, behavioral or attitudinal. The results of these analyses will help enable suppliers to determine which communications channels appeal to which niche markets.

By taking segmentation to the next level, niches more narrowly define a customer group's wants and needs and can be thought of as "subsegments." While often much smaller in size than more traditional segments (e.g., academia vs. industry), even small niches can become more profitable as the efficiency of marketing to them increases. Companies routinely search for opportunities that are created by customers with unmet needs: not all potential customers are alike; they may have different needs or wish to have their needs met in different ways. In spite of the many possible distinctions between individual customers, there often are subgroups of individuals who share similarities and who are therefore more likely to respond favorably to the same marketing mix, e.g., promotions, communications, advertising and other marketing mix variables. A different marketing mix can target each subsegment because they are constructed to minimize variations between respondents within each segment and maximize differences between segments.

Suppliers interested in targeting their message to the right segments and niche markets in the life sciences will most benefit from this report. Towards this goal, the following marketing communication channels were evaluated for their effectiveness using this multi-level segmentation:

• Printed catalogs
• Vendor Web sites and direct email
• Direct mail
• Sales representatives
• Print advertising
• Scientific meetings and exhibit halls

This report also highlights the significant differences between the results of the Marketing to Life Scientists: A Psychographics Analysis (2004) and this year's assessment of how life scientists perceive and react to the promotional techniques most commonly used by suppliers.

Respondents were also surveyed regarding the following marketing benchmarks in the life science industry:

• Who are considered the most effective life science marketing communicators, and which life science supplier is considered the "best-in-class" in each major promotional channel?
• Where do life science customers turn to find information on companies and products?
• How do life science customers prefer to receive information in order to make a purchasing decision?

Segmentation can play an important role in developing marketing communications campaigns because it is often more efficient to address the needs of smaller groups of customers, particularly if they have many characteristics in common, e.g., years of experience, age, gender, etc. This is especially true in the life sciences where a great many suppliers offer only a limited product line and practice niche marketing. For these companies, segmentation enables them to maximize the impact of their promotional budget by targeting less contested customers or by promoting a mature product to new buyers. For all suppliers-regardless of their size-segmentation helps them to avoid sending ineffectual or irrelevant messages to customers.

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