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Doctors as Consumers

Detailed Physician Profiling

Connect with physicians beyond the workplace

The Doctors as Consumers study profiles physicians’, PAs’ and NPs’ consumer media habits, lifestyle and attitudes, providing a more complete picture of your HCP audience to support effective non-endemic promotional strategies

  • Over 3,000 respondents across 20+ physician and PA/NP specialties
  • Covers online behavior (including social and AI), television and streaming audio use, sports & leisure, attitudes & opinions, and other profiling
  • Collected via online survey of active physicians, invited through email and weighted to universe of each specialty by age group and gender

Healthcare providers aren’t like other consumers, and Doctors as Consumers is the industry’s only syndicated study documenting their non-work activities and media consumption.

While much of the content in Doctors as Consumers replicates the MARS Consumer Health study, the robust HCP sample provides unique insights on differences between doctors and other consumers.

Access Professional Health Resources
Study Content Overview

HCP & Practice Profiling

HCP Demographics

  • Age & gender
  • Ethnicity & Hispanic/Latino/Spanish
  • Language(s) spoken at home
  • Number of people in household
  • Residence area — urban, suburban, rural

Professional & Prescribing Profile

  • Physician and PA/NP specialty & hospitalist (Yes/No)
  • Association membership details & formulary committee membership
  • Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) & professional activities in the past year
  • Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) & digital activities (e.g., responding to medical questions on social media platforms) in the past year 
  • Number of prescriptions written in an average week & prescribing data categories
  • New drug/device/procedure adoption behavior

Practice Details & Patient Interaction

  • Primary practice type (e.g., solo practice)
  • Patients seen in an average week
  • Social determinants of health: major challenges facing their patients (e.g., treatment affordability, housing/food insecurity, etc.)
  • Types of DTC digital advertising that cause the most friction during patient consultations (e.g., ads that simplify risk/benefit profiles)

Lifestyle Behaviors & Attitudes

Working During Personal Time

  • Work-related activities performed outside normal working hours (e.g., admin work, CME, research) 
  • Channels used to access medical-related content & formats most likely to engage with (e.g., visual abstracts of clinical infographics) 
  • Time spent on professional/clinical tasks at home — before/after work & on weekends
  • Focused attention vs. multitasking when consuming medical content during personal time

Sports & Leisure

  • Regular participation in 50+ activities (e.g., sports/exercise, outdoors, leisure/arts/entertainment, self-improvement)
  • Types of virtual workouts/fitness sessions regularly participate in
  • Types of video games

Attitudes & Opinions

  • Digital health tools
  • AI: trust & usage
  • DTC advertising: awareness, perceived patient empowerment, and friction during consultations
  • Personal health, work-life balance, career, pharma
  • Factors impacting career satisfaction (e.g., work-life balance, compensation)

Internet, Streaming Audio & Podcasts

Online Behavior, Websites & Social Media

  • Hours spent online in a typical day (by daypart)
  • Percent of time spent online for professional vs. personal use
  • Percent of time online spent on social media (professional or personal purposes)
  • Medical, shopping, social media, and AI platform/website visitation & frequency (personal use)
  • 30+ topics regularly researched or followed online, including AI, mental health, and personal productivity

Radio, Podcasts & Streaming Music

  • Devices used
  • Time spent listening in a typical day
  • Types of audio listened to during commute to/from work
  • Streaming music: frequency & apps/platforms used 

Podcasts (personal purposes)

  • Frequency & genres
  • Apps/platforms used
  • Actions taken after hearing advertising
  • Used promo code for advertised product/service

Television – Linear & Digital

Household Vewing

  • How TV is watched (OTA, cable subscription, streaming) & DVR use
  • Streaming TV: devices used & smart TV brands

Personal Viewing

  • Hours spent watching in a typical day (by daypart) 
  • Percent of on-demand vs. live TV viewing
  • 40+ TV genres watched in the last week & sports watched (during its recent season)
  • 25 TV networks watched (in the last week)
  • Streaming services/platforms used (free & paid) in the last month
  • Paid streaming services: Pay higher fee for ad-free tier