Vaccine Marketing - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 392

season, and produced 4 million doses. Actual sales amounted to about 400,000
doses (Thomaselli 2004 ; Calkins 2004 ).
Differentiators are also threatened by competitors who attempt to match the dif-
ferentiator's offering, while operating at lower costs. Vaccine manufacturers based
in low-cost countries who have achieved WHO prequalifi cation represent such a
threat to multinational vaccine manufacturers' sales in low-income countries and
progressively also in middle-income countries.
Some low-cost vaccine manufacturers may enjoy a competitive advantage vis-à-vis
multinational fi rms even if they do not achieve willingness-to-pay parity as long as
their cost advantage is larger than their willingness-to-pay gap. Their cost advantage
allows them to compete successfully in low-income countries where buyers value a
low price more than product- and non-product performance differences. Multinational
manufacturers attempt to counter this threat through acquisitions of and partnerships
with low-cost manufacturers.

13.4.3 Product and Branding Strategy

Compared with therapeutics, the size of vaccine product lines is modest even for the
largest vaccine manufacturers. GSK, the number one vaccine fi rm, had only “over
30” approved products in 2010 (Andrews 2011 ). Product lines grow in size through the
addition of vaccines against new disease targets, and by developing differentiated
versions of existing vaccines.
Four factors encourage vaccine differentiation. (1) Differences in vaccine effi cacy
across consumer segments: because standard fl u vaccines are less effective for
elderly, Sanofi Pasteur launched High Dose FluZone for the elderly. (2) Differences
in vaccine effi cacy across regions: for example, a Hib vaccine effective in Finland
was not in Alaska, and Chilean infants raised 3 times higher antibody responses than
did children in Belgium (Moxon and Siegrist 2011 ). (3) Diversity in preferences for
other product features, e.g., needle-phobia is higher among children than adults. (4)
Diversity in ability to pay: for example, Sanofi Pasteur offers three vertically differ-
entiated pertussis vaccines—a whole cell pertussis vaccine; a 2-component acellular
pertussis (acP) vaccine; a 5-component acP vaccine—at different prices in different
markets. Pfi zer markets Prevnar, which protects against 7 serotypes, and Prevnar 13
with protection against 13 serotypes, at different prices. Moreover, price discrimina-
tion can be more easily sustained with product differentiation, and differentiated
products can justify higher prices. For example, Sanofi Pasteur's High Dose FluZone
and IntraDermal fl u vaccine are sold at a premium compared to standard vaccines in
the United States.
The main obstacle to vaccine differentiation is the increase in complexity and
cost for vaccine manufacturers and buyers. Doubling the number of vaccines in a
country and introducing single-dose vials in addition to multi-dose vials (for safety
reasons and to reduce the waste that occurs when a partially used vial has to be dis-
carded) are estimated to increase vaccine storage needs by 500 % or more (Kaufmann