The Successful Launch and Diffusion of New Therapies - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 206

detailing. None of these studies, however, focuses on the role of DTCA in support-
ing newly introduced pharmaceutical drugs (which may be one reason for the small
effect found by prior studies).
Sample dispensing by physicians is rarely addressed in academic studies despite
being an important physician decision. From the perspective of a pharmaceutical
firm, samples that are dispensed by physicians may lead to prescribed long-term
treatment (Morelli and Koenigsberg 1992 ). Thus, sampling can be a valuable tool to
support the launch of new pharmaceutical drugs, especially for chronic conditions.
Venkataraman and Stremersch ( 2007 ) find that physicians' prescription behavior in
response to firm's marketing efforts and to patients' requests may differ from their
sample-dispensing behavior in response to such factors. They also find that when a
marketed drug is more effective or has more side effects, physicians tend to provide
more samples in response to firms' marketing efforts.

7.3 Step 3: Leveraging the Potential of a New Treatment

Across Countries

The international realm brings interesting challenges to global pharmaceutical launch
teams. Probably among the most important challenges are differences across coun-
tries in new drug sales growth and the interdependence of international launch timing
and pricing, generating a need to develop sophisticated global launch strategies.

7.3.1 Variance in the Market Potential and Speed of Diffusion

Across Countries

Marketing research on international growth of new products in various industries
has identified several key drivers of variation across countries in market potential
and diffusion speed (Dekimpe et al. 1998 ; Gatignon and Robertson 1989 ; Helsen
et al. 1993 ; Stremersch and Tellis 2004 ; Talukdar et al. 2002 ; Tellis et al. 2003 ; Van
den Bulte and Stremersch 2004 ; Van Everdingen et al. 2009 ). For instance, the
wealth of a country was found to have a positive effect on the diffusion process in
terms of reducing the time before the country tries the innovation and speeding up
the diffusion within the country (Van Everdingen et al. 2009 ). Other studies show
that additional country characteristics, such as national culture, affect new product
growth differentially across the product's life cycle (e.g., Stremersch and Tellis
2004 ; Tellis et al. 2003 ). Moreover, several studies have found evidence for cross-
country learning effects (Dekimpe et al. 2000 , Dekimpe et al. 1998 ; Mahajan and
Muller 1994 ). Countries that introduce an innovation later than others seem to have
faster within-country diffusion patterns.
Desiraju et al. ( 2004 ) examined the relative attractiveness of various countries in
terms of maximum penetration potential and diffusion speed for a new category of