Feedback and Corrigan Consulting recently completed online research on the Consumer Decision Process, Online Support Forums and Key Influencers of Cancer patients seeking/selecting a health care provider.
The objective of the study was to understand the consumer community landscape
online with four key questions:
- Where do existing and potential patients discuss Cancer services?
- What are they discussing?
- How are they discussing it?
- Are discussions influencing provider selection?
The ethnographic study was conducted entirely online by passively listening and observing behaviors. Thousands of posts and interactions were observed on dozens of notable channels where local residents and cancer patients asked questions, exchanged information and recommendations, and discussed options. The study was conducted by those with anthropological and sociological backgrounds and reliant on trained researchers rather than software algorithms to determine sentiment. The research began with an intense discovery period where researchers embarked on a platform and channel-agnostic search to determine where individuals having conversations about cancer, in a designated geography, were finding and asking for information, and followed with a mining phase of behavioral analysis.