The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $73,731 grant to Bentley University for research by principle investigator Dominique Haughton, professor of mathematical sciences, to explore how the pharmaceutical industry can more efficiently allocate marketing expenditures to reduce costs to consumers. The award is from the NSF Statistics Program, which participates in a cross-directorate initiative known as a Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI). 

For the study, entitled “Optimization of the Marketing Mix in the Health Care Industry, with a View to Reducing Consumer Costs,” Haughton will partner with Epsilon to employ data mining techniques to model the return on investment from various types of promotional spending to market a drug, and use the model to draw conclusions and develop actionable recommendations to the pharmaceutical industry on how to achieve savings from a better optimized marketing mix to help lower costs to the consumer.

The study also has broader impacts, Haughton says. “If convincing recommendations can be conveyed to the pharmaceutical industry regarding an optimal marketing mix, the savings that result can be expected to contribute to lowering the cost of drugs to individual consumers, an issue that is key to lowering the cost of healthcare. Such recommendations would be pertinent to other industries as well.”