Shane Pearse, Principal
Recognised as an expert in his field, Shane has over 25 years’ working in B2B and consumer market research. Prior to Pivotal his experience includes the establishment of two start up agencies, as well as working for some of the largest multi-national research firms. He specialises in the pharmaceutical industry and related areas such as medical technology.
Shane is motivated by the difference that better healthcare products and services can make to patients’ lives. The amazing stories he hears from patients and HCPs in the course of his job lead to insights that help build great strategy. The stories of ordinary people whose lives are anything but ordinary.
Like the story of the former stand-over man who acquired Hepatitis C whilst in prison; his wish was to be able to play with his young grandchildren and safely dress any scraped knees without risk of infecting them. Or the GP who was greatly impacted by a young woman he diagnosed with schizophrenia. She came to him in great distress after hearing people talking about her on the bus, even though she was the only passenger on board. In both cases new treatments had become available, and their stories helped build effective strategies to deliver the treatments to people who need them.
Using qualitative and quantitative research methodologies as well as existing data sources, he has a talent for understanding and providing meaning to market research data, and clearly articulating the potential impact on a business.
He has a keen interest in introducing relevant new research approaches to his clients. He helped to develop CAP (Call Activity Profiling) in 2008, Australia’s first service benchmarking pharma company sales call rates, coverage and frequency amongst GPs using full CRM data sets. Data from CAP was extremely valuable for segmentation and targeting as well as sales force design and call planning. He was a very early adopter of online focus groups and Market Research Online Communities. Both these techniques enable small/isolated groups of respondents (either HCPs or patients) to be brought together and allows research that once would have fallen in the too hard basket to be undertaken.
He has also pioneered the use of geodemographic modelling in Australian pharma, starting in 2006. For example, looking at the numbers of people with chronic conditions in each suburb or brick or within GP practice catchment areas and relating this to where sales are occurring, to improve sales force efficiency.
Shane’s career in pharmaceutical market research started with IMS Health in New Zealand, before being head hunted to to lead the TNS Healthcare team in Sydney (now Kantar Health). He then managed the Foresearch market research team at Dendrite, prior to co-founding LifeScience Partners with Debbie Field (later sold to IMS Health). Shane is a member of The Research Society (formerly known as the Australian Market & Social Research Society or AMSRS) and has been certified by them as a Qualified Professional Researcher (QPR) since the inception of the accreditation scheme in 2003.
