Correspondence: Donna Kelly, GfK Healthcare, 587 Skippack Pike, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania 19422, USA. E-mail: dkelly@gfkv2.com

¹is Executive Vice President at GfK Healthcare, one of the world's foremost health-care marketing research agencies. She has extensive experience in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies with specific areas of expertise, including the following: theory and research in attitude formation and persuasion; theories of personality; jury/argumentation research; research design; and construction of explanatory models based on quantitative survey data. Dr Kelly has clients from among the world's largest health-care companies and has worked on both US and global product strategies.

²is Senior Consultant at GfK Healthcare. With a broad background encompassing both marketing and the visual arts, Mr Rupert has specialised in helping health-care marketing managers guide the creative execution of brand communications. He has conducted brand personality development for products in a variety of diseases areas. Mr Rupert has created colour and typeface-testing instruments to gain early customer input for the pharmaceutical branding process. Skilled in several languages, Mr Rupert has also managed and conducted numerous international research projects.

Received 25 September 2008; Revised 25 September 2008; Published online 28 November 2008.

Abstract

Marketing to health-care professionals has traditionally focused on developing rational arguments based on the product's attributes to persuade the health-care professional of that product's unique benefits. However, the broader body of research on persuasion has pointed to the importance of 'non-rational' aspects, such as emotion and the values held by the individual who is the target of persuasion. We first outline the role of the non-rational in persuasion, providing a very brief review of some of the major persuasion theories/research that have examined the role of emotions and other non-rational influences. We then provide an overview of qualitative research techniques that are valuable in uncovering non-rational drivers of product choice and can be utilised to establish branding based on more than just product attributes, especially in markets where products are relatively undifferentiated, based on their clinical properties alone.