Mapping the Modern Life Science Purchasing Journey: How Customers Think, Decide, and Purchase in 2025

On the surface, the journey the life science customer takes may seem very simple – especially in the modern age of point and click purchasing.  However, if you look more closely, it is easy to see that the journey a customer takes from deciding they need a specific product, through all of the touchpoints, channels, and interactions, to the point of purchase, this journey is quite complex. This customer purchasing journey is a visual representation of all those touchpoints a customer goes through when selecting different products in the life sciences market. It helps tell the story of their experiences and aids in ensuring that no customer slips through the cracks at any given touchpoint.

This study offers in-depth analysis of the performance of 31 different suppliers, allowing for analysis of how supplier strategies have shaped customer experience scores over time and how individual suppliers compare to their competitors over time.

In the 2025 edition, we asked 739 scientists to evaluate their experience with suppliers during specific touchpoints including their awareness and research of potential products, the purchasing process of those products, and evaluation of the delivery and any post-delivery interactions and service.

The report includes a Tableau workbook and will allow you to:

• Uncover and compare different product category performances for 31 top-tier brands. Product categories include:

• Biologicals (e.g., tissue culture media, enzymes, reagents)

• Data analysis software

• Glassware / Plastics

• Instrumentation

• Research / Specialty kits

• Complete product solutions that integrate instrumentation, reagents, consumables, etc.

• Customized products (e.g., full-length synthetic genes, model systems [engineered cell lines, animal models])

• Customized services (e.g., specialized assay development, NGS library prep)

• Explore the intricacies of the customer purchasing journey at select touchpoints (2016- 2025).

• Gain clarity on the relative significance of purchasing journey touchpoints that drive customer satisfaction across 31 brands.

• Discern regional nuances in customer purchasing trends.

• Track generational shifts in customer purchasing journey touchpoints.

• Investigate how various employment sectors influence customer purchasing trends.

The Tableau workbook is fully interactive, and can be used to export charts for presentations, further research, or other needs.  This will allow you to target your benchmarking to your customers.  Want only to see YOUR company’s information and survey responses and produce a report?  You can do that.  Want to compare your company against a few competitors? Use Tableau for this function.

A key tool for suppliers looking to gain a competitive edge, this report equips teams with the insights needed to stay ahead of the competition.

BioInformatics designed an online quantitative survey to address the objectives.

The survey this report was based on was fielded to n=739 respondents who were members of the Science Advisory Board (SAB) — a segment of the scientific community with a demonstrated willingness to participate in market research activities.