Package Insert
Official document also known as Labeling and Full Disclosure. Full description of what the product is approved for, contraindications and warnings, and listing of type, severity and frequency of side-effects seen in clinical trials. PIs have to be included with the medicine in many markets.

Paired Comparison
A product test in which people are asked to compare two products. Also known as a dyadic.

Parallel Groups
Groups of experimental subjects that are studied over the same time period for purposes of comparison.

Parametric Analyses
Statistical methods which assume the normal (i.e. Gaussian) distribution of data e.g. paired t-test.

PAT
Profit After Tax
Also known as Net Profit.

Patent Expiry
Date at which patent protection for branded product expires.

Pathology
The study of the causes, nature, mechanisms and consequences of diseases.

Patient Flow
The technique of modeling the movement of patients through different stages of their treatment.

PBIT
Profit Before Interest and Taxes
Also known as Operating Profit.

PBT
Profit Before Tax

Perceptual Mapping (see Brand Mapping)

Personal Interview (see Research Interviews)

Pharmacodynamics
The sum total of the physiological, pharmacological, biochemical and therapeutic effects of drugs in the body following administration.

Pharmacoeconomics
Application of economic theories and principles to the evaluation of medicines.

Pharmacogenomics
Application of genome mapping and sequencing to improve the targeting and/or benefit of therapeutic interventions.

Pharmacokinetics
The process of absorption, distribution, metabolism (biotransformation) and elimination of medicines from the body.

Pharmacology
The study of the nature of drugs, the processes they undergo in the body and their actions.

Phases of Clinical Trials and Medicine Development

• Phase I - The first exercise to test a drug on human subjects. It is usually carried out on normal male volunteers to evaluate safety as well as the tolerable dose-range and regimen.
• Phase IIa - Pilot clinical trials intended to test the efficacy and safety in selected human groups with the index disease. (see Dose Range Finding)
• Phase IIb - Rigorously designed well-controlled trials to evaluate efficacy and safety.
• Phase lIla - Studies in larger numbers of patients (often in multiple sites) in order to generate further evidence of efficacy and safety under controlled and uncontrolled conditions as well as in special patient groups (e.g. those with renal insufficiency or liver dysfunction).This takes place before the submission of the NDA dossier.
• Phase IlIb - A trial initiated after the submission of an NDA but before approval in order to further substantiate efficacy based on other end points such as subjective sense of improvement, quality of life and resource utilization.
• Phase IV - Sometimes referred to as Post Marketing Surveillance studies, these are designed to provide additional information on the safety and efficacy profile of the drug in the real world. Their designs could be as formal controlled studies or as non-experimental observational ('naturalistic') studies.

Pill Burden
The number of pills taken each day by patients. Can also be defined to include the physical size of the pills.

Pilot Interview (see Research Interviews)

Pipeline
The range of products in clinical development for a company. (see also Phases of Clinical Trials and Medicine Development)

Placebo
An inactive, usually innocuous, substance given to an untreated group during a clinical trial.

Population
The entire body of interest in a research investigation, e.g. all individuals who conduct cardiac surgery.

Portfolio Planning
Assessment by senior management of therapeutic areas and key targets for prioritization in research and development.

Positioning Statement
Written declaration by a company regarding its view of where its product or service sits in the marketplace. (see also Product Positioning)

Post-Analysis Research
The process of taking the results from a market research study and sharing them with the same or other respondents to develop further insight or explanation into the findings.

Post Marketing Surveillance (see Phases of Clinical Trials and Medicine Development)

Post Test (in Marketing Research) (see Research Studies)

PPO
Preferred Provider Organization
A model of managed healthcare delivery in the US. (see also Managed Care Organization)

Pre Coded Question (see Research Questions)

Pre Test in Marketing Research (see Research Studies)

Precision
Statistical definition refers to the size of the estimating interval when estimating a population parameter.

Preference
A term derived from economics and decision theory used to refer to the relative desirability or value of a given state or outcome for an individual or population.

Preference Share
Derived from trade-off analysis, the value assigned to product based on an assessment of its attributes.

Prevalence
The total number of cases of a disease area or condition in existence at any one point in time. (see also Incidence)

Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) (see Pricing Research)

Pricing Research

• Monadic Price Test
  With monadic price testing, a respondent is shown a product described in terms of its key features and also its price. They are then asked whether they would buy the product at that price. The sample is split into monadic cells, each of which sees a different price, but each respondent sees only one price. This technique reduces bias and is considered by many researchers as the most 'pure' pricing research. Unfortunately, it requires very large sample sizes to reduce the sampling error - which are often prohibitively expensive. The monadic price-test can be coupled with other techniques, such as Gabor-Granger, to assess likely usage and price sensitivity.
• Gabor-Granger
  Gabor-Granger is an approach for determining price sensitivity or elasticity and is based on presenting a product at a series of different prices and asking whether the product would be purchased. Its main limitation is in drawing attention to the product's changing price, assuming that price is a conscious variable. Also, since each brand is tested in isolation, assumptions must be made about the availability and price of other brands.
• Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) or Van Westendorp
  The basic technique asks respondents at what price they perceive a product would be cheap or expensive, and also so cheap or so expensive that they would not buy it. The theory is that by plotting the answers to these questions it is possible to predict various key prices, including the range of acceptable prices. It is, by nature, a way of assessing respondents expectations regarding price, but it is limited in its reliance upon consumers' price awareness and the fact that it does not yield much information about how likely the respondent is to buy the product at a given price.

Pricing Strategy
Deliberate planning of the pricing structure in relation to factors such as consumer wants, product attributes and competition in such a way as to ensure overall profitability.

Primary Research (see Research Studies)

Principal Components Analysis (see Data Reduction)

Probability Sampling (see Sampling Methods)

Probe Question (see Research Questions)

Product Image
What customers believe the product to be over and above objective technical performance.

Product Lifecycle
Refers to the stages in a product's life, including pre-launch, new, peak year, maturity and decline.

Product Mapping
Multi-dimensional maps of consumers' product positioning, often revealing indirect competition between different product choices.

Product Perception
Personal interpretation of what one hears, sees, smells. i.e. the reception of sensory stimuli and conscious or unconscious application of them to form an acceptable interpretation of their meaning.

Product Portfolio
Categorization of a company's products into one of four classifications using a two dimensional matrix, the 'Boston Consulting Group' grid. Products are defined according to their relative market share and market growth as either 'Stars', 'Cash Cows', 'Problem Children' or 'Dogs' to determine marketing strategy of each.

Product Positioning
Determining the most appropriate place for a product in relation to its competitors in terms of a series of predetermined criteria, e.g. cost, value for money, consumer benefits. Kotler defined positioning as "Is the act of designing the company's offering and image so that they occupy a meaningful and distinct competitive position in the target customer's mind."

Product Profile / Concept
Detailed description of a product, sometimes expressed as percentages against predetermined criteria, which is intended to make identification by the target user or consumer readily possible.

Product Promise
Succinct expression distilling core brand values.

Profile
A description of a group of individuals based on their demographic, behavioral or attitudinal characteristics. (see also Product Profile)

Projection
A statistical forecast of data based on analysis of historical values.

Projective Techniques
Methods used in qualitative research to overcome barriers to communication between the interviewer and the respondent, by projecting ideas onto another situation. (see also Enabling Techniques)

Promotional Testing
Marketing research testing the effectiveness or otherwise of new promotional concepts and materials.

Prompt Question (see Research Questions)

Proportionate Stratified Random Sampling (see Sampling Methods)

Proposal
A description of the strategies and tactics, together with budgets, which are submitted to a company by a vendor of services, such as marketing research, communications, advertising, etc.

Prospective Study (see Research Studies)

Pseudo Random Sampling (see Sampling Methods)

PSP
Point of Service Plan. A model of managed healthcare delivery in the US. (see Managed Care Organizations)

Psychographics
The segmentation or classification of people into groups based on their psychological of lifestyle characteristics. Also termed psychometrics. (see also Psychometrics)

Psychological Influences (see Motivations)

Psychometrics
The science of measurement of subjective constructs (e.g. quality of life) by scaled responses to item questions. It demonstrates the extent to which the scores thus generated are valid, reliable and sensitive to change using principles of statistics, behavioral sciences and psychophysics. (see also Psychographics)

Public Relations
Conscious effort to improve and maintain an organization's relationships with such publics as employees, customers, shareholders, etc with a view to strengthening reputation and utilizing broad range of media.

Pure Research (see Research Studies)