Understanding the life science buyer: Is your customer knowledge keeping up?

Ask any experienced life science leader how well they understand their customers, and chances are they’ll tell you: very well.

And they’re probably right.

Years of industry experience, established relationships and direct customer conversations build valuable knowledge. That understanding influences everything from commercial strategy and service development to how a business positions itself in the market.

But there’s a question worth asking: when was the last time you put that knowledge to the test?

Even the most experienced leaders can find themselves making decisions based on assumptions that haven’t been challenged for years.

A different perspective from CPHI

At CPHI Milan 2026, we partnered with Molecule to Market to explore the competing priorities shaping pharma outsourcing.

Host Raman Sehgal spoke with 11 industry leaders, asking them to choose between considerations such as scale or specialization, speed or certainty, and cost or flexibility.

What emerged was a broad spectrum of perspectives.

Some leaders prioritized specialist expertise, particularly as new drug modalities become increasingly complex. Others emphasized scale and the ability to support customers through commercialization.

When discussing scale versus specialization, Joe Lipari, Global Traceability Solutions Expert at Systech, made a particularly interesting distinction:

“Depends who you’re talking to. Procurement wants scale. The engineers want customization.”

It’s a simple observation, but one with significant commercial implications. Two stakeholders involved in the same purchasing decision may be evaluating your business against very different criteria.

Elsewhere, participants highlighted how customer priorities shift between early development and commercial manufacturing, while others stressed the importance of local relationships alongside global capabilities.

These discussions weren’t intended to establish a definitive view of the market. But they raised an important question: how confident are you that the things you’re emphasising in your commercial strategy are the things your customers actually value?

Validate, challenge and enrich what you know

This is where we believe businesses have an opportunity to strengthen their competitive position.

Not by disregarding the experience they’ve built, but by being willing to examine it.

Validate your understanding
Are the priorities your commercial teams hear from customers reflected across your wider market? Does your positioning align with the factors that influence purchasing decisions?

Challenge your assumptions
Have customer expectations changed? Are you placing too much emphasis on capabilities that matter internally but carry less weight with buyers? Are there differences between the audiences you’re targeting that your current approach overlooks?

Enrich your knowledge
What could broader market intelligence reveal about emerging needs, competitor perceptions or opportunities you haven’t yet considered?

The answers don’t always require a major strategy and research program. Sometimes a syndicated report or focused series of customer interviews can reveal valuable insight. Other challenges warrant a more comprehensive assessment of the market, your brand and your commercial opportunities.

The important thing is creating space to ask the questions before committing to a direction.

Turning market understanding into commercial advantage

One of the CPHI participants, Martin Meeson, CEO of Axplora, offered a prediction for the next five years:

“Those of us who are closest to our customers will win.”

It’s a sentiment that strongly reflects how we approach strategic work at ramarketing.

Understanding your audience is fundamental to making informed decisions about where to compete and ultimately how to differentiate. It’s also why the connection between ramarketing and ISR Market Research is particularly valuable.

Through ISR’s specialist life science research capabilities, businesses can draw on existing syndicated intelligence and industry benchmarking, or commission bespoke research to address specific commercial questions.

Those insights can then inform everything from brand positioning and messaging to market entry strategies and business development activity.

Ultimately, the opportunity is to make better use of the expertise you already have, supported by a clearer, more current understanding of the market around you.

Your experience tells you a great deal about your customers, but the question to ask yourself is what you might discover by looking again.