The term ‘Millennial Generation’ normally refers to the generation, born from 1980 onward, brought up using digital technology and mass media. According to ‘Millennial Mindset’ – a website dedicated to helping businesses understand millennial employees and new ways of working, the key attributes of this generation are broadly considered as follows:
- Technology Driven:
- Socially Conscious
- Collaborative
The millennial mindset:
The publication also indicates that the overall mindset of the millennial generation is also vastly different from the previous generations, which can fall into four categories:
- Personal freedom, Non-hierarchical, Interdependent, Connected, Networked, Sharing
- Instant gratification, Wide Knowledge, Test and learn, Fast paced, Always on, Innovative
- Fairness, Narcissistic, Purpose driven
- Balance, Eco-friendly and Experience focused
Seeks different professional ecosystem:
In the professional arena too, this new generation’s expectations from the professional ecosystem are often seen to be distinctly different, as they are generally seen to be:
- Willing to make a meaningful professional contribution, mostly through self-learning
- Seek maintaining a reasonable balance between work and personal life
- Prefer flexible work environment, unwilling to be rigidly bound by convention, tradition, or set rules
- Impatient for fast both personal and organizational growth, often on the global canvas
The ‘Millennial Generation’ in India:
The millennium generation with a different mindset, aspirations and value system, already constitutes a major chunk of the Indian demography. According to the 2011 Census, out of estimated 1.2 billion population, around 701 million Indians (60 percent) are under 30 years of age, which also very often referred to as ‘demographic dividend’ of India.
Currently, a large number of Indians belonging to the millennial generation are entering into the work stream of both national and International companies operating in the country.
The challenge in healthcare arena:
In the healthcare sphere too, we now come across a fast increasing number of technology savvy and digitally inclined patients and doctors of this generation. Accurately gauging, and then meeting with their changing expectations has indeed been a challenging task for the pharma companies, and the related service providers.
Their expectations from the brands and other services, as provided by the pharma companies, don’t seem to be quite the same as before, either, so are the individually preferred communication formats, the way of processing, and quickly cross-verifying the product and other healthcare information. Before arriving at any decision, they were found to keenly observe the way brands are marketed, their intrinsic value, type and the quality of interface for engagement with them by the companies, whenever required.
Thus, from the pharma business perspective, qualitatively different strategic approaches, to both the millennial doctors and patients, would be of increasing importance and an ongoing exercise. The goal posts would also keep moving continuously. Achieving proficiency in this area with military precision, I reckon, would differentiate the men from the boys, in pursuit of business performance excellence.
In this article, I shall primarily discuss on the changing mindset and needs of the patients and doctors of the ‘millennial generation’.
A. Treating millennial patients differently:
Around 81 percent of millennial doctors, against 57 percent of older generation doctors think that millennial patients require a different relationship with their doctors than non-millennial patients. About 66 percent of millennial doctors actually act upon this and change their approach, as the survey reported.
The difference:
The key differences on millennial doctors’ treating millennial patients, are mainly in the following areas:
- Expects more, doesn’t get swayed away: Millennial doctors are more likely to advise the millennial patients to do additional research on their own for discussion. 71 percent of millennial doctors believe it’s helpful for patients to do online research before their appointment. However, they don’t get swayed by requests from more-informed patients, as only 23 percent of millennial doctors say they are influenced by patient requests when it comes to prescribing a treatment, whereas 41 percent of non-millennial doctors report finding those requests influential.
- Gets into the details: The millennial doctors are more likely to simplify and streamline explanations for older patients, whereas non- millennial doctors were more likely to simplify explanations for millennial patients too, treating them exactly the same way.
- Relies on digital resources: Millennial doctors rely mostly on using digital resources for treating millennial patients, but only around 56.5 percent of them do so for non-millennial patients.
B. Treating millennial doctors differently:
For effective business engagement and ensure commensurate financial outcomes, pharma companies will first require to know and deeply understand the changing mindset, expectations, and aspirations of the millennial doctors, then work out tailor-made strategic approaches, accordingly, to achieve the set objectives.
Top 3 expectations from the pharma industry:
According to a June 2016 special survey report on Healthcare Marketing to Millennials, released by inVentive Health agencies, the top 3 expectations of millennial and non-millennial doctors from the pharma industry, are as follows:
| Rank | Millennial Doctors | % | Rank | Non- Millennial Doctors | % |
| 1. | Unbranded Disease Information | 67 | 1. | Unbranded Disease Information | 58 |
| 2. | Discussion Guides | 48 | 2. | Latest Specific News | 46 |
| 3. | Adherence Support | 40 | 3. | Healthy Life Style Information | 42 |
Pharma players, therefore, can provide customized offerings and services, in various innovative platforms, based on these top 3 different expectations of millennial and non-millennial doctors, to achieve much needed critical competitive edge for a sustainable business performance..................
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