With all four quarters in 2015 showing year-on-year value growth against 2014, and a full-year value growth rate of +3.8%, contact lenses continue to represent a strong and growing market in England, Scotland and Wales (the figures don’t include Northern Ireland) and a significant revenue opportunity for practices. Previous articles reviewing retail panel sales data from research organisation GfK for Optician have detailed the various trends in the contact lens market towards, for example, daily and silicone hydrogel lens options, and also the growth of the toric and multifocal contact lens categories. But the focus of this piece is on the trends concerning the patient rather than the product utilising the GfK contact lens fitting audit data set.
Over the 11 months to November 2015 (December data to be available from January 26) 2.82 million contact lens fitting appointments where conducted. This figure is up +0.2% as compared with the whole of 2014 and by +7.1% as compared with equivalent months representing a strong growth in the number of contact lens wearers.
Looking at the gender split of patients attending fitting appointments we can see that contact lenses is a category dominated by females. Of all fitting appointments held from January to November 2015 in 66% of cases the patient was female, slightly up from 65.1% over the same months of 2014.
Interestingly, when looking at only new patients (defined as patients not using contact lenses upon attending the fitting appointment) we see a slightly more even split of 62.7% of appointments attended by females and 37.3% by males. This could be taken as a sign that the gender split of wearers is becoming more evenly balanced with a more even split of male and female new wearers entering the category; however, upon review of previous year’s figures we see that the 37.3% of new patient appointments attended by males in 2015 is the lowest proportion of any of the last four years, with males attending 42.5% of new patient appointments in 2012, dropping to 39.6% in 2013 and 38.7% in 2014.
There are two main factors at play here, firstly that there truly is a higher number of female than male contact lens wearers – the primary reason being that females are found to attend two-thirds of all fitting appointments.
Alongside this, and considering the higher proportion of total than new patient fitting appointments attended by females, it also appears that once fitted with contact lenses, women are more frequently returning to practices for follow-up appointments than males and/or that males are more commonly dropping out of contact lens wear after the initial fitting and so not returning for further appointments. The learning here for practices is that once a male patient has been initially fitted with contact lenses, additional subsequent steps to confirm successful wear, allay any complaints or concerns the patient may have, encourage these patients to return to the practice for follow up appointments and ultimately attempt to reduce the higher propensity to drop out/not return to practices for these patients is likely to be of benefit.
When looking at existing contact lens wearers attending fitting appointments we also see that female patients are more likely than males to switch to different contact lenses. Some 15.7% of fitting appointments attended by existing female wearers resulted in the patient switching to new lenses, while for appointments attended by existing male wearers this figure drops to 13.9%. We know from our data that patients are increasingly switching to daily and silicone hydrogel lenses with daily silicone hydrogels being the destination lens and category with the highest growth rate. These figures suggest that along with being more likely to return to practice for follow-up after the initial fitting, women are also more open to switching to superior or more suitable contact lenses, while men are more reluctant to switch from their lenses and need more encouragement and convincing of the benefits of doing so.
Generally, the data shows that for both new and existing patients there is a difference in behaviour between men and women when it comes to the fitting appointment. Women are more likely to attend more often and more likely to switch the lenses they use, while men attend less and are less likely to switch lenses. Not quite of Venus and Mars proportions but a clear difference in behaviour nonetheless. Practices should seek ways to address this different behaviour throughout the patient experience so they can encourage and support patients to benefit from successful contact lens wear and so that practices can increase and protect a growing revenue opportunity.
Note: Data quoted covers mainland GB only
Prepared by Paul York, account manager, Optics, paul.york@gfk.com, 020 7890 9513, www.gfk.com/uk, www.twitter.com/gfk_en
Final Issue December 2015
*GFK Fit Audit Traking, UK market. All data shown is for January 2015 to November 2015. All data shown is % of UK fitting appointments
