Leveraging Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 488

Table 16.3 Datasets relevant for research on social media in the pharmaceutical industry
Database name, provider Types of data

Sales , inancial and market data
SDI (Surveillance Data, Inc.)

Pharmacy audits, physician prescription behavior,
dispensing of generics

Medi-Span (Wolters Kluwer) Drug sales and price data

IMS LifeLink Longitudinal prescription information, patient-level

metrics

IMS National Prescription Audit National prescription activity and payment modes

IMS National Sales Perspectives Pharmaceutical product sales to pharmacies, clinics,

hospitals at actual transaction prices

IMS NPA Market Dynamics Patient-level prescription data

IMS Rx Benefit Design Drug sales volume and market share by patients'

insurance benefits

IMS Therapy Forecaster Ten-year therapy-level forecasts in key international

markets

CRSP/Compustat Financial and market data on public firms

Datastream (Thomson Financial) Financial and market data on public firms

Delphi Pharma's Product Trends and
Company Trends Databases

Historical and forecast data for top drugs and
leading pharma firms

Factiva (Dow Jones) Business news and articles on pharma, stock quotes

PHIND (Informa) Business news and articles on pharma

Lexis-Nexis Business news and articles on pharma

URCH Publishing Reports and insights related to pharma

OECD, WHO, CIA World Factbook,
World Bank

Economic, demographic data by country

Media data
AC Nielsen Data on DTC Advertising

Media Vest Global Data on DTC Advertising

Radian 6 Monitor mentions, sentiments, and chatters on social

media platforms

GNIP Real-time social media data and analysis.

Sermo Allow drug companies to “listen” in to physician

discussions on Sermo.com

Twitter Developers Twitter API resources

Youtube Direct Youtube API resources

ComScore Internet usage data

Source : Adapted from Petrova ( 2011 )

With social media, marketers gain firsthand insight into the topics that interest
customers and the language they use. Pharmaceutical marketers have the opportu-
nity to move beyond speaking at customers to engaging with them. Fundamentally,
incorporating social media into communications strategies means a cultural change.
It is a shift from a culture of speaking to a culture of listening as well as speaking,
from individual consumption to group experience sharing, from personal sales mar-
keting to transparency and authenticity. Social media offer competitive advantage to
firms that develop authenticity of the message earlier than their competitors.