Vaccine Marketing - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 390

focused on public policy issues, particularly those affecting women, played an
important advocacy role for HPV vaccination (Baron 2008 ). In Europe, a number
of civil society organizations actively supported the HPV vaccination agenda
(Laurent- Ledru et al. 2011 ). Opponents in the United States were found mainly in
conservative Christian groups who feared that HPV vaccines would spur promiscu-
ity and undermine abstinence (Guyon 2005 ; Baron 2008 ).
Opposition to vaccination has a long history, starting in the eighteenth century with
the fi rst vaccine (Poland and Jacobson 2011 ; Spier 2001 ; Offi t 2011 ). Concerns about
vaccine safety are fueled by generally unsubstantiated anti-vaccination writings,
which can lead to vaccination refusals and subsequent disease resurgence (Leask
et al. 2010 ; Larson et al. 2011 ). A well-known case is a 1998 article in The Lancet
claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The article was formally retracted
and recently shown to have been an elaborate fraud (Deer 2011 ; Godlee et al. 2011 ).

13.4 Vaccine Marketing Decisions

13.4.1 Deciding Where to Compete

The main dimensions for segmenting the vaccine market are disease targets, consumers,
countries, and products (technologies).
The CDC website lists 26 different diseases which are preventable with currently
existing vaccines. 36 Preventive vaccines against at least another 12 diseases are
under development (Business Insights 2009 ).
The potential consumers for each vaccine are usually segmented by age (e.g.,
infants, children, adolescents, and adults) and/or other indicators of increased risk
for the disease (e.g., injecting drug users for hepatitis B). Country/region is an addi-
tional important segmentation variable for consumers because of regional variations
in disease risk, vaccine effi cacy, and other country/region characteristics.
Differences in vaccine products, fi nally, are a fourth dimension for structuring the
vaccine market. Vaccines can be classifi ed by product technology (e.g., live attenu-
ated (weakened) organisms and killed (inactivated) whole organisms), process tech-
nology (e.g., egg-based vs. cell-based production), delivery method (e.g., injectable
and intranasal), number of diseases targeted (single- vs. combination vaccines),
valence (mono- vs. multivalent vaccines), and other product characteristics.
The attractiveness of the various disease/consumer/country/region/product
segments is typically assessed through variables including segment size and growth,
and segment profi tability drivers such as competitive rivalry, buyer power, entry
barriers, and threats from substitutes (Porter 1980 ). Vaccine-specifi c indicators
underlying assessments of segment size and growth include population/birth cohort

36 http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/default.htm#newvacc , accessed August 28, 2011.