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A few months ago, while conducting a qualitative market research study for an investigational rare disease asset, we noticed something revealing happening.
All of the physicians participating in the research immediately understood the primary endpoint. It was a familiar endpoint, clinically intuitive, easy to connect to patient outcomes. That part of each conversation flowed naturally. They could quickly envision where the product might fit into practice.
Then we moved into the secondary endpoints and more complex statistical outputs. And the energy changed.
Brows furrowed. A few respondents paused awkwardly. One physician finally admitted, somewhat sheepishly, “I know this seems favorable, but I’m honestly not sure what these data mean for my patients.”
And suddenly the discussion became less about the product itself and more about interpretation. Physicians struggled to articulate the product’s differentiating value, not because the science lacked merit, but because the architecture of the Target Product Profile (TPP) had become too dense for the context in which it was being used.
The clinical team, of course, had done exactly what they were supposed to do. The TPP was scientifically rigorous, extremely complete, accurate, and aligned with regulatory expectations. Internally, it worked beautifully.
Externally, however, it became harder for respondents to process.
That moment reinforced something I’ve increasingly come to believe: a TPP designed for internal scientific alignment is not necessarily optimized for external strategic learning.
And perhaps more importantly, different audiences may require fundamentally different versions of the same TPP.
Within pharmaceutical organizations, the TPP serves as one of the most important strategic documents surrounding the development of new medications. At its best, it becomes a kind of organizational north star: aligning clinical ambition, commercial opportunity, evidence generation, and future positioning around a shared vision of what a successful product ultimately might look like.
A strong TPP defines:
Internally, this level of detail is essential. Clinical teams need precision. Regulatory teams require completeness. Data scientists need specificity. Forecasting teams need clear assumptions robust enough to model future utilization scenarios.
But once the TPP leaves the internal environment and enters a primary marketing research setting where practicing clinicians are involved, the challenge changes entirely.
The issue is no longer scientific completeness. The issue becomes comprehension.
One of the recurring mistakes I see in TPP-based research is the assumption that a single version of the profile can effectively serve every audience.
In reality, physicians, payers, nurses, patients, and other stakeholders (e.g., administrators, financial decision-makers) all absorb and interpret scientific information through very different lenses. Even among different physician audiences, comfort with complex statistics, surrogate endpoints, and technical clinical language can vary dramatically depending upon specialty, practice setting, patient volume, academic orientation, and sheer exposure to the disease itself.
For instance, an academic oncologist who spends her days immersed in Kaplan-Meier curves and subgroup analyses processes information very differently than a busy community physician trying to move through twenty patients before dinner while simultaneously managing prior authorizations, staffing shortages, and a waiting room full of anxious families. That busy community doctor operating under intense time pressure may instead gravitate toward practical interpretation:
Neither approach is “more correct.” They are simply different cognitive environments.
And if respondents cannot comfortably process the profile being shown to them, the quality of insight begins deteriorating almost immediately.
This is where I think many organizations unintentionally create friction. In internal meetings, phrases like:
...become familiar shorthand for scientific progress.
But in qualitative interviews or focus groups, those same constructs can create distance rather than clarity.
I remember one physician in a TPP session admitting:
“I know these numbers are supposed to impress me, but I’m struggling to connect them to what I’d actually experience treating patients.”
And that confession stayed with me.
Because it captured the distinction between scientific accuracy and in-the-trenches accessibility.
Importantly, making a TPP more accessible is not “dumbing it down.” If anything, it is the opposite. It is a communication strategy designed to ensure that respondents can engage with the profile thoughtfully, react to it realistically, and place it properly within the context of their actual clinical practice.
After all, the goal of New Products marketing research is not to test whether physicians can decode scientific language. It is to understand how they would interpret, value, and ultimately prescribe a product in the real world.
Increasingly, I believe TPPs used for external research should behave less like static scientific documents and more like layered narratives.
Most TPPs today present respondents with a dense array of endpoints, assumptions, statistics, and differentiators all at once. Precise? Absolutely. Cognitively efficient? Not always.
A more effective approach is what I think of as a tiered narrative structure.
The first layer communicates the essential clinical story in intuitive terms:
The second layer begins unpacking MOA, differentiation, and strategic implications.
Only then does the third layer dive deeply into the statistical proof itself.
This mirrors how people naturally process information. They orient first. Then interpret. Then interrogate details if curiosity or skepticism demands it.
Importantly, different audiences may stop at different layers. And I think that's perfectly acceptable.
The purpose of research is not to force respondents through scientific complexity. It is to understand how they interpret and react to the product.
One of the things I think organizations sometimes forget is that TPP research is not merely about testing reactions. It is also about discovering gaps:
Sometimes what emerges from a TPP study is not simply feedback about the product, but insight into what additional evidence still needs to be generated.
Perhaps the MOA requires clearer explanation. Perhaps PROs are needed to make the product benefit feel tangible. Perhaps HCPs require more operational clarity around sequencing or administration.
These are profoundly valuable strategic discoveries.
At its best, the TPP is more than a regulatory artifact. It becomes a bridge between theoretical science and a tangible future market reality.
But bridges only work if both sides can cross them.
Truly effective TPP-based research will require organizations to think more carefully about audience-specific design:
Ultimately, a TPP succeeds not merely when it is scientifically rigorous.
It succeeds when people can envision where it fits into the real world.
