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Like much of what I write these days, this essay started over coffee last week with a long-time client at a large pharma company. He’s one of those people in the industry that everyone seems to know—and for good reason. He’s sharp, endlessly personable, and equally at home having a serious strategy discussion or grabbing a beer at the bar after a long day. He started his career in sales, “carrying the bag,” and later moved into marketing research, brand strategy, and now commercial excellence. He understands what it means to drive results—not just from behind a desk, but from the field, face-to-face with customers. And as you might expect, he has no shortage of stories to show for it.
We were talking about how his company is preparing for several major launches when he asked a pair of questions that I’ve been ruminating over this weekend. First: what recent examples can I point to where primary marketing research has delivering a clear return on investment (ROI)? And second: how do we demonstrate that insights from primary marketing research are actually driving customer behavior change—something that’s essential to launch success?
To be fair, these aren’t new questions. We've debated these since the days of PMRG. As an industry, we’ve been grappling with them for years—fielding challenges from senior management, brand leads responsible for P&L, and other internal stakeholders consuming and acting on our outputs. But the context has changed. With the proliferation of real-world data, CRM systems, social listening, claims, EHRs, CX data, transactional feeds, and digital engagement metrics - you name it - companies are investing in more tools than ever to guide decision-making. And that means primary research is now competing for budget in ways it never has before.
So I sat down to put some thoughts on paper—less as a definitive answer and more as an invitation to further conversation. I’ve started gathering input from colleagues here at ThinkGen, and I’m hoping to hear from others as well: What are you doing to demonstrate the delivered, demonstrable value of marketing research—especially in a landscape where predictive analytics is often positioned as the silver bullet?
When I started thinking more seriously about how to measure the ROI of primary marketing research, the first person I called was my colleague Bart Weiner. Bart is ThinkGen’s head of strategy and one of the most seasoned people I know in this industry. He likes to say he’s been around pharma “for the better part of 40 years”—and it's true. Over that time, he’s built and led three successful marketing research businesses in pharma, earning a reputation not just for his sharp mind, but for his no-nonsense clarity and the kind of steady "King Solomon-like" fairness you associate with a Northeast Philly upbringing. So I asked Bart: How do you think about measuring ROI in this space?
He didn’t hesitate. “It’s not always easy,” he told me. “The value of marketing research is often strategic, not transactional. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be measured.” He suggested starting where most ROI frameworks do—by defining the full scope of the investment. That includes calculating the inputs: external vendor fees, internal staff time, professional fees, technology or tools used to run the research, participant incentives, and any travel or logistics expenses. Even if the costs have evolved—like moving more work from Schlesinger Associates to virtual platforms—it’s important to capture the real resource inputs involved.
From there, Bart laid out a simple but effective approach to defining the return. Some of it is directly measurable—like revenue growth from a successful launch that was shaped by research, or cost savings from killing a weak campaign idea before it reached development. Improved customer retention or better customer targeting based on research findings can also show up clearly in the numbers. But there’s also what Bart calls the “strategic ROI”—the things that are harder to quantify but just as valuable: increased decision confidence, stronger stakeholder alignment, faster time to market. In those cases, surrogate KPIs can help tell the story—fewer reworks, quicker decisions, or improved internal satisfaction with direction and clarity.
Finally, Bart emphasized that the strongest ROI stories come when teams connect research directly to the decisions it helped shape. Did the research change the path you were on? Did it result in a decision you wouldn’t have made otherwise? Can you model out the impact, even directionally? He gave a few examples—like concept testing that led to a 20% stronger in-market performance, or customer journey research that improved retention by 5%. The point isn’t to over-engineer the math. It’s to trace the line from insight to action to outcome. And when you can do that—even with directional estimates—you start to make a real case for the value of what we do.
Even as CEO, I make it a priority to stay close to the work—not out of necessity, but because it’s the part of this job I love most. I’ve never wanted to drift too far from the heart of what drew me into this field in the first place: facilitating interviews and focus groups, engaging in thoughtful dialogue, and listening—really listening—to how people think, feel, and (think that they) decide. It’s in those live, candid, unscripted conversations where insights emerge, but also where something more meaningful happens: connection, perspective, and the spark of new ideas in real time.
A few recent moments stand out.
We worked with a client preparing to launch one of what is now among the fastest-growing biologics in the marketplace. Our task was to help refine the structure and delivery of their interactive visual aid—ensuring the data made sense, the narrative flowed naturally, and the story landed with clarity. I vividly remember the first day of fieldwork. The data narrative wasn’t flowing properly. HCPs were skeptical, asking questions, piecing it together but not quite there. Fast forward to the final round of testing, and the difference was palpable. The narrative was smoother, more cohesive. The data felt purposeful - driving them towards a specific set of patient types. Interest and engagement had grown visibly. We used a pre- and post-discussion intent-to-prescribe battery, and by the end of the study, the lift was unmistakable—not just in the numbers, but in the tone and excitement of the customers. Our final presentation felt like the locker room before the Super Bowl.
With that same client, we also collaborated on a rare disease campaign concept that nearly didn’t make it out of the early stages. I was in the room when it was almost scrapped. But something about it had potential. We stuck with it, and after multiple rounds of refinement—testing, learning, evolving—it became something extraordinary. The final campaign was emotionally resonant, strategically sound, and ultimately award-winning. But more importantly, it was authentic and compelling to both patients and their HCPs alike.
Another area where we’re seeing continued ROI is in the growing number of advisory boards we lead—particularly in specialty and rare disease categories. Our focus is on thoughtful meeting design, skilled facilitation, and extracting actionable insights from these high-value group discussions. Executed effectively, advisory boards go far beyond collecting opinions. They help cultivate relationships between scientific leaders, top patient advocates, and the company’s internal teams. They build mutual understanding, surface unmet needs, and create the kind of alignment that benefits both the business and the broader treatment landscape. Time and again, they prove to be an investment that clearly pays dividends.
One of the most impressive recent examples I’ve seen comes from a brilliant marketing research leader working in ultra-rare who applied a truly ingenious approach—not traditional primary research per se, but a fusion of data analytics, AI, and unstructured data to solve a very human problem: identifying patients with a rare disease who were otherwise falling through the cracks. By analyzing free-text physician notes, she and her team uncovered subtle clues that pointed to patients who might be at risk but had not yet been diagnosed. These were patients no structured query could have found. But through careful analysis and cross-functional collaboration, those signals became visible. She found three of them.
What made this work even more powerful was the way she translated it back to the business. Each of the 3 identified patients were ‘dollarized’—quantified in terms of potential lifetime value to the brand. That meant she could draw a direct line from her team’s digital sleuthing to revenue impact, something that speaks volumes in conversations with financially minded leadership. This is exactly the kind of example we need more of—where research, analytics, and commercial strategy come together to deliver real-world, demonstrable value.
I’m sharing these examples not to close the book on the ROI conversation, but to open it wider. In a world where there are more data sources than ever and an ever-growing engine to process them--predictive analytics and AI—it’s easy for primary research to feel like just one option among many. But if we believe in being truly customer-centric and "customer-obsessed" as many say, then there’s still something uniquely powerful about going straight to the source. Sitting down with a customer—whether face-to-face or pixel-to-pixel—and listening with intent. That kind of connection still matters. And in many cases, it delivers a kind of clarity that no dashboard ever could.
This isn’t to say that primary research should compete against other data sources. On the contrary, its value often lies in helping to interpret them—bringing together disparate inputs and grounding them in human behavior, emotion, and context. That’s where research can shine, especially when it’s framed in business terms and tied to action. In this new era, where everyone is being asked to do more with less, the insights community has an opportunity to show that we’re not just generating findings—we’re driving outcomes.
So I’d love to hear from you. What are you doing to demonstrate the ROI of research in your organization? Have you seen—or led—an example where an insight changed the course of a decision, or clearly moved the needle on a launch? Let’s keep this conversation going, not just to defend the value of what we do, but to elevate it. Because if we’re serious about being customer-obsessed, then what could be more essential than listening—really listening—to the people we’re here to serve?
