Questions about pharmaceutical marketers?

Question

1. How do pharmaceutical marketers segment the market?

2. How do they position their medications?

3. Are these marketing strategies socially responsible?

Answer 1

The segments would be prescription phamaceuticals targeted to prescribing physicians, nonprescription or over the counter pharmaceuticals,  pharmaceuticals used by hospitals or other health care facilities, veterinary pharmaceuticals, and research pharmaceuticals and chemicals.  

Medications are positioned not only in the medical press read by health care professionals, but also, increasingly, in mainstream advertising to the public.  While the public can't buy the pharaceuticals without a prescription, they know that most prescribing physicians are likely to be influenced by their patients who have a particular product in mind.  The requirements of the FDA include the fact that the drugs are safe and effective and that they also are in some way an improvement over older drugs.  Since older drugs are continually passing into generic status there is a lot of pressure to "prove" or demonstrate that the new drugs are better.   Because of the huge financial incentive and the high R&D costs of developing new drugs, some may be tempted to "manufacture" test data that exaggerates the improved nature of the new drug.  

Social responsibility means to keep the interests of the public uppermost.  In a for profit market this is almost never going to be the case.  Social responsibility may get lip service but the prime mover of any drug company is to make money.   If governments remove the financial incentive to generate new drugs by price controls it will inevitably result in fewer new drugs being produced, which would be tragic especially in the case of new treatments for very serious diseases like cancer.    In other situations where older drugs are actually just as good as so called new and improved medications, the benefit is illusory.