Kantar Media's 2013 Online Behavior Study

by Kantar Media Healthcare Research Team

Kantar Media’s MARS Online Behavior Study helps the industry make better decisions about how to incorporate online into pharmaceutical and OTC marketing strategies. The MARS Online Behavior Study is fielded as a re-contact among the MARS Core respondents who said they accessed the Internet in the last 30 days.

What does the study provide?

• An understanding of consumer opinions and behavior regarding the Internet as a source of information for health and wellness.
• Insight into the use of different types of digital media – from diet/nutrition sites and social media to ailment specific resources and specific health-related sites.
• Background into the characteristics of websites which keep consumers coming back to and relying on for information.
• Detailed information on which ailments consumers are researching online, the stage of the illness and what types sources they go to – online, doctor, print or another.
• Direct linkage back to the core MARS study of product usage, attitudes, media usage and behavior.

What's new in 2013?

We've made changes this year to the study to reflect our increasingly digital world. We also added new conditions and have expanded our information sources section to include new online and offline sources. See below for a sampling of these changes.

The definition of “research” within our conditions researched section now includes both online (e.g. visiting a website dedicated to a condition, Internet search, online videos) and offline (e.g. talking to friends, healthcare professionals, magazine articles) activities. We added Diabetic Nerve Pain/Neuropathy and Low Testosterone to the list of ailments researched.

We made changes to the section for information sources used to find more information about condition:

• Information sources expanded to include online and offline general usage and frequency.
• Ability to profile conditions from MARS OTC/DTC core study by information source usage.
• Information sources for a specific condition expanded to additional online and offline sources.
• Ability to compare general information source usage/exposure with condition ‐ specific usage.

The new sources are Healthcare Providers, Patient Peer/Word of Mouth, Offline Content or Advertising and Online Content or Advertising.

We added new response options for Online Health Research and Internet Use, including looking for information about hospitals, treatment centers, urgent care or surgery centers and visiting association or non‐profit websites.

Social and content websites added to list of sites measured: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia

Updated response list for mobile apps to include Nutrition and dieting, Fitness, Symptom checker/Diagnosis tools, Health testing and tracking tools, Health reference guides, Condition management, Locator tool for pharmacy/ER/fast clinic, Medical professional consultation

For more information on how you can get full access to this study, contact us here.