Human Albumin Ethnography Study

The client would like to relaunch its human albumin products in China with new brand strategy and market concept. In order to deeply understand the current market situation from users’ perspectives, an ethnography study was conducted to gather insights about user journey, information sources, key factors which impact brand selection and new concept evaluation.

4 patients (or their family) were interviewed, 2 in Shanghai, 2 in Baoding (a tier-3 city). All participants had experience of using or purchasing human albumin. Patients had suffered from acute or chronic diseases.

Each session lasted for 3-4 hours and consisted of two major parts:

1) in-depth interview about diagnosis, purchase behavior, usage of human albumin, brand perception and concept evaluation;

2) field visit of hospital and pharmacy to observe a complete purchase journey, including carrying and storage.

From this study, we found most of the communication with doctors and the purchase journey about human albumin happened to patients’ family. Users could absorb relevant knowledge from doctors. But it was pharmacy staff who largely decided the brand users got.

The purchase journey differed in two cities. Sometimes users could get albumin without prescriptions in pharmacies.

Personas were created according to different levels of albumin knowledge. Advanced users showed less interest in the new concept.