Wen-hsi (Karen) Kuo

Supported in line & pipeline products to achieve their business goals and strategic business priorities both in the AP markets and globally by generating strategic business insights.

• Led regional and local primary market research in Asia Pacific markets (conducted 20 regional & local projects in 2023)
• Conducted market landscape assessment, patient journey, HCP & HCC segmentation for new launch of oncology, vaccines and hospital acute care products
• Implemented pricing study to inform strategic decision for both pricing and non-pricing levers for vaccine product.

Enhanced collaboration to deliver more integrated business insights to drive higher level of business performance and strategic insights.

• Collaborated with global payer market research team, forecasting team, access team and delivered integrated insights for marketing decision.
• Piloted in AP to collaborate with global forecasting to incorporate primary market research data into forecasting model.

• Led primary market research and secondary data analysis across franchises for Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand markets to identify business potential and opportunities, understand market landscape and segmentation, and track brand performance .
• Played a core role as AP market research CoE (center of excellence), liaised with global and regional marketing leads to share experience and conduct multi-country market research projects.
• Assist in shaping company’s strategy during budget plan period by conducting total market forecasting, market intelligence analysis, profit pool analysis, TA prioritization and related analytics.

Market research related:

• Provided market/product trend analysis to leadership team and brand team to assist in monitoring market dynamics in regular basis.
• Acted as a consulting partner to brand team and proactively integrated insights from business/customer/implementation metrics to develop or update Merck Marketing tools (Buying Process, Market Map, Customer Portrait, etc.), run quarterly brand meetings, consolidated all information into market insights.
• Run in-house market research as an cost-effective approach to collect customer insights.

Multi-channel marketing related:

• Built MSD Taiwan MCM capability & execution excellence by creating consistent strategy and MCM tactical plan.
• Established an integrated MSD consumer healthcare website (ME Club) & on-line resources. Website content maintenance and develop & execute promotion plan to drive success of the website.

• Conducted more than 70 customized quantitative projects, including U&A study, advertising test, packaging test, customer satisfaction study, brand equity study, product concept test, and other ad-hoc projects, among Consumer Electronics, Tobacco, FMCG, automotive, financial service, durable, IT, Telecom, pharmaceutical, and entertainment fields to better help clients’ marketing strategic decision-making, branding performance and positioning.
• Initiated, managed, and coordinated 3 international projects in North America, Europe, and Asia (working with local research vendors to execute projects and delivered integrated consumer insights)
• Conducted qualitative studies, including leading concept evaluation in-depth interviews and moderating focus groups / in-depth interviews among Tobacco, IT, FMCG, and telecom.